Virginia Horse Country
It was a beautiful April Sunday for the Middleburg Hunt Point to Point this year. Last year, some wet weather put a damper on the festivities, but this year was a cool, sunny day. It was perfect for dressing your best for a tail gate with friends, and watching horses race on the beautiful steeplechase course at Glenwood Park. The overhead sun was strong and bright all day, so there was a lot of strong shadows in all the images.
People commonly think that having a lot of sun is perfect for making photos. It is true that the camera does like to have as much light as possible to make good exposures. The problems with sun in the middle of the day and early afternoon, is that it is not falling in a good direction for good portraits. With the sun right above, there will be hard shadows that darken faces, horses making post processing necessary to bring out details that you want to see. With such bright sun, many people attending the Point to Point were wearing fashionable hats to lessen their direct exposure to the sun which added additional challenges to photos.
Middleburg, Virginia
For all of these, a fill flash was necessary to get the faces lit. If not used the details could not be brought out from the shadows. This is a very blunt light when moving and shooting while walking around the park. There was no time to setup an off-camera flash to get more dimension to the light. You can see some hard shadows where the direct flash was firing towards the subjects. It is not the prettiest, but it did get the job done. Also, it was the easiest way to get quick photos with all the impromptu group poses. Thanks to the weathermen that brought us a great day!
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