Our Shadows and Our Photos

What do we do about our shadows? In photography the best time of the day to take photographs is in the early morning or in the late evening when the sun is low in the sky, but that can create a problem with our shadows.

With a low evening or morning sun behind us, our shadow may appear in our photographs. And who wants their shadow in their beautiful landscape photograph? I know I don’t, and I’m guessing you don’t either. But how do we keep our shadows out of our photograph?

I experienced this problem more than once in my photography journey. One of the more recent times was on an evening photoshoot in Utah’s Arches National Park. Earlier that day, my family and I spent time as tourists visiting the Windows and Double Arch area. While hopping around on the rocks near the Windows, I noticed several formations I wanted to photograph. Knowing that the evening light would be better, I decided to come back later that day.

Morning and evening are definitely the best times to photograph the Arches’ desert. The low, warm sun cast beautiful light on the rock formations revealing their true magnificence, and this evening was no exception. The light was outstanding, making for a beautiful evening of desert photography.

The Windows rock formations face west and rise out of a desert flatland. This allows the sunlight to sweep across the desert and hit the formations without anything blocking its rays. That unabated light really made the rocks pop for me. But when I tried to photograph a full landscape with the sun behind my lens, my shadow slipped into the camera’s frame.

Getting Rid of Our Shadows

What did I do, and what can you do when your shadow appears in your picture? Here’s a list of six techniques we can use to eliminate our shadows from our photographs.

1. We can move. Even by moving just a few feet we can reposition our shadow out of the photograph. I used this technique in the above photo in conjunction with technique number 2.
2. Wait a few minutes. The sun constantly moves across the sky. Sometimes if we just wait a few minutes, our shadow will be angled in a slightly different direction and drift out of our photograph. With the photo on this post, not only did I move slightly, I also took the photos six minutes apart. During that time the position of my shadow shifted.
3. Try zooming in to crop your shadow out of the photograph. I also used this technique while photographing different rock formations that evening.
4. Another great technique to use is to find a shadow that is naturally in your photograph and hide your own shadow in that shadow. You can use a tree, a bush, a rock or even tall grass to do this. Unfortunately, in the desert I could not use this technique because there was nothing available to hide my shadow in, but I have used it in the past with favorable results.
5. Getting down low is another way to eliminate your shadow. Get on your knees and lower your tripod.
6. You could also try to photoshop out the shadow later. I avoid this technique because I strive to use my nature pictures undoctored and let nature be nature, but you may find it helpful.

All these methods are useful, but they do have their drawbacks. Each one of the first five will change your composition in some way. And in each situation, you will not be able to use all these methods. Work to see which one or two of these approaches would work best for your photograph and use one of those.

So I hope that helps you with the shadows in your photograph, but what about the shadows in our lives. Just like we have unwanted shadows in our photograph, in a metaphorical way, we also have unwanted shadows in our lives. And the funny thing about shadows, they only show up when there’s light. When we illuminate our lives with the light of Christ, and the light of Scripture, we begin to see things we can change in our lives.

Each one of us has shadows in our life that we wish weren’t there. Those shadows are there either through our own actions, the actions of others or just because we live in a fallen, imperfect world. But the great thing about shadows is that they are powerless against the light. When the light moves it changes, minimizes or eliminates the shadows. When we pray, God moves and He can take care of the shadows in our life.

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