Project one: Core skills - Shoot portraits with flare

Mike Harris turns harsh light into a blessing by shooting into the sun and creating a lens flare portrait

- Mike Harris

The Mission

– Use sun flare to spice up an outdoor portrait

Time

– 15 minutes

Skill level

– Intermediate

Kit needed

– DSLR, mirrorless or bridge camera

There are many ways to avoid lens flare. You can attach a lens hood, alter the angle of your shot, block incoming light or choose to shoot at certain times of day to mitigate this often unwanted phenomenon. But used intentionally, lens flare can be an effective way to spice up your outdoor portraits.

The stylized aesthetic is particularly useful if you want to obscure a boring or overly busy background, or make use of harsh, unflattering sunlight. You don’t need any specialist kit to produce great lens flare portraits, but zoomlenses are known to cause more lens flare than primes. It also stands to reason that lenses without top-notch anti-reflective coatings will be more susceptible to flare, but how intense you want the effect is a matter of taste. We’d recommend experimenting with the lenses you own.