A sun spotlight is a great way to highlight the subject of a photograph. In the image below you see an almost spooky shot of a father and son standing on a path. As you can see in the image the background, foreground, and clouds are quite dark. They have an almost painterly feeling.
It only took about 10 minutes till the clouds blew through. A break in the clouds occurred and at the same time, a father and son walked by. Boom!
I exposed for the highlight (e.g. the brightest part of the ground) using spot-metering and then did my best to make sure the image was in focus (hard to do on a rangefinder).
This picture has an almost unreal feeling to it and frankly, I did little to adjust the colors and other parameters. This is what you get with good lighting.
Here you see the full perspective of what I saw. It really was a beautiful scene. The field was really well illuminated, but the 50mm lens was a bit wide to focus on for viewing on the screen. I would love to see this shot on a large canvas someday.
If you are interested in the location, here is a Google map showing the precise spot I took the shot. I have been coming to this location for about 4-months and the lighting never seemed to get quite right. Today I think I nailed the lighting, but if I was about 40 feet closer, I would have an even better shot.
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