Start of Summer

 Well, July is here. The summer holidays are in full force. The weather is mostly sunny and getting hot.

A fun time to try and get some relaxing in.

However I do find the summer a challenge to do the photography I like. There's lots of sun! This is great and challenging at the same time. The sun rises a lot earlier and sets a lot later. Many more hours of the day to shoot. This also means that the sun is, generally, a lot brighter which makes getting certain pictures much more difficult. When travelling I have to compromise on getting certain shots. The only time I may be in particular location will be near midday when the sun is overhead and very bright. Often this provides a difficult situation to take pictures in. Everything is overexposed. Yes filters can help but you also have a lack of shadow that many times just makes the picture seem meh and not awesome. But you do the best you can and hope that in post processing you can tweak just enough to look good.

Another challenge with nature photography in summer is wildfires. There have been many times when I have planned to go visit a certain geographic region and then when the day comes the trip has to be cancelled because of a forest fire near there that is making it difficult to access, the smoke pollution means difficulty breathing or evacuation alerts/orders are in place. I was on a trip to capture some fall colours but the smoke in the air made it quite difficult to breathe. It didn't affect the pictures but I had a sore throat and was coughing for a few days. That fire was two mountain ranges away from where I was. I thought I would be fine. Oh well, that's the way it goes.

One of the things I enjoy about photography in summer is that the daylight comes much earlier. I enjoy being woken up by the sun. Most people are still sleeping from spending most of the evening around the campfire so I go out and take the camera for a walk. If I'm by a lake quite often you can get a little bit of a mist coming of the lake and it looks just great. If I'm not taking pictures there's a good chance that I've got a fishing rod in hand and hoping to catch lunch.

Another great thing about summer photography is being able to go out with different people and do photography. More people are able to take vacation during the summer and are able to go out during the week and explore than only on the weekends. It's nice to go explore with people and not just by your lonesome.

Overall I find there are definite pros and cons to summer nature photography. What's the conclusion? Let's just go out and take pictures!