Cloudy Days
Living in the Pacific Northwest, we are constantly under an overcast sky. Many people think that an overcast sky is not as great for photography as a clear sky. False. Photographing blue skies is nice, but there are many advantages to an overcast sky. First, they act as the worlds largest soft box, creating very pleasing and even lighting; there won't be any harsh shadows to ruin a photo. Second, they make taking HDR photos a lot more fun. Blue skies can become very dull. An overcast sky has a great deal of potential to make a photo more dramatic--especially when bracketed with multiple exposures. Normally they would be blown out to expose the scene properly, but with HDR, the texture of the clouds can be recovered.
I recently discovered that there was a man-made lake and park near where I'm living. I was able to get off work around 11am today due to a front-loaded work week and figured it would be an ideal time to go wander around the park and get back into making some HDR photos and take advantage of the overcast sky. These photos were bracketed with 5 exposures at 1-stop intervals and merged in Lightroom.
