In the last edition of enews, South Dakota photographer Les Voorhis talked about photographing grand landscapes and wildlife in the early-morning light of the historic Black Hills. Once the sun has ascended into a more dominant position in the sky, however, Voorhis is forced to adjust his shooting strategies and subject matter to compensate for often harsher light and greater contrast.

While you may not have to do as much prep work and research as you do for a sunrise shoot to capture just the right light, shooting nature and wildlife in midday poses its own unique challenges. “The biggest problem is finding a subject that’s in light that’s flattering to it, which can be difficult in midday,” Voorhis explains.

One of the biggest advantages of digital photography, however, is the ability to adjust your custom white balance to compensate for a cold shade light or a cold overcast light, explains Voorhis—so he relies on this technique often during the midday heat. “With slide film, your images would come back with an extremely blue cast,” he says. “With digital, you can place the shot in a soft, warm light. So in midday, I try to find subjects that are entirely evenly lit with a soft light, typically in shade or in an overcast environment, and find subjects that are complemented well by that type of lighting.”

It’s a good time of day, for example, for Voorhis to tackle macro work. “Even if you’re in the shade, the light is usually strong enough from the light bouncing around that you can work a macro subject in the shade and still adjust your shutter speed to stop any movement and get the depth-of-field that you need for macro,” he says.

Voorhis uses the Tamron 60mm, 90mm, and 180mm macro lenses for these projects. “The 180 is what I call my insect lens: I’ll walk around a lot more with that lens chasing butterflies and honeybees, because the 180 gives me a little bit more reach and a little bit more comfortable camera-to-subject distance,” he says. “My 90mm is my overall flower portrait lens, and I also use it some for insects. The 60mm doesn’t compress the background quite so much, so you can concentrate on one flower and still be able to see more of the flowers behind the main flower. You get a much different look with each lens; all three have such close focusing ability. I also find myself taking more and more macro images with the 10-24mm and the 17-50mm lenses. This can be fun because the results look so completely different than those images taken with one of the traditional macro lenses.”

In direct sunlight, your camera can be easily fooled, depending on the subject in front of you. In addition to adjusting his custom white balance settings, Voorhis uses reflectors quite a bit as well: “I start bouncing light into the shadows and doing what I can when more of that high contrast occurs during this part of the day.”

Voorhis concedes that his choice of aperture is usually more dependent on his subject than on the time of day. “If I’m shooting a really broad stream scene, even in midday, I’m going to shoot with a much smaller aperture, because it’s like shooting a grand landscape,” he says. “But if I’m trying to isolate a flower close up with a wash of color behind it, I’ll use a faster shutter speed with a shallower depth-of-field.”

Polarizing filters and graduated neutral-density filters also prove handy during the harsh glare of midday. “The polarizing filter I use a lot, particularly near water or with strong foliage scenes to bring out the color saturation and cut down on glare,” Voorhis says. “That’s an example of a filter you can’t really replicate in Photoshop—you just can’t remove a reflection in Photoshop the same way you can in the field! And even though I do quite a bit of HDR work, sometimes there are things in HDR that you’ll never be able to line back up again. That’s where the graduated neutral-density filter becomes a good choice when you’re dealing with high-contrast scenes, such as a really bright sky and a dark foreground.”

As the sun starts to make its daily descent, it’s necessary to switch photographic gears once more. Check out the final installation of this nature and wildlife lighting series in the next edition of enews to see how Voorhis draws in the richer colors of sunset, works more in extremes, and caps off the day in the Great Outdoors with powerful silhouettes of old-time cowboys against the sweeping landscapes of South Dakota.

For more of Les Voorhis’ work, go to www.focuswestgallery.com.