Landscape Photography on a Cloudless Day

Photographers may be some of the only people with a negative opinion of blue skies! But who can blame us? Harsh sunlight doesn’t complement a lot of subjects very well – if anything, just the opposite – and an empty, blue expanse usually doesn’t add much interest to the top of a landscape photo.

But as much as I’d love to control the weather, part of the challenge and fun of landscape photography is that you need to work with the hand you’re dealt. Often, that will include a cloudless sky. In fact, I’ve been on two landscape photography trips recently where every day had a totally cloudless sky. What’s worse, these were Photography Life’s two big workshops of the year! Did our groups take this as a sign to give up and go home? Or did we find a way to make the most of the blue skies above?

Luckily, everyone still managed to take good photos, including some photos that wouldn’t have been possible on a cloudy day. In today’s article, I’d like to go through the main techniques that allowed us to take good photos during these two trips, despite (or because of) the sky. Maybe you’ll find them useful the next time you’re in a beautiful location without any clouds overhead!

1. Shoot Narrower Scenes

One classic approach to landscape photography is to shoot with a wide-angle lens in order to capture the sweeping expanse of a grand landscape. But on a cloudless day, this can result in a large area of empty space at the top of your frame – not to mention all the harsh shadows falling across the landscape from the direction of the sun.

So, why not focus on a narrower scene? If the sky isn’t in your photo, all that matters is the light on the landscape itself. You don’t need to include the sky in your composition if it isn’t helping the photo.

I love shooting with a telephoto lens on a cloudless day. The long focal length allows me to pick out a small segment of the landscape that is as interesting as possible, without including unwanted details (such as an empty sky) that may take away from the photo.

Also, don’t forget to point down at your feet. Some of my favorite landscape photos from these two trips occurred because I was looking for intimate landscapes instead of grand photos. Subjects like this work great no matter how the sky looks.

2. Convert to Black and White

Harsh shadows and textures often don’t work quite right for color photography. My friend and fellow Photography Life writer Adam Sheridan is fond of saying “the bare sun is the biggest desaturator of colors.” But who says you need to be capturing colors?

Black and white photos often work great on an overly sunny day. You can find dramatic shadows and textures that are more pronounced than usual, and you don’t need to worry about dull colors appearing in your photo. Especially combined with the previous tip, you can get some really nice B&W abstracts on a cloudless day.

My best advice for this type of photo is to not think of it as a photo of your subject – instead, think of it as a photo of shadows, shapes, and textures.

3. Shoot Before Sunrise or After Sunset

The midday sun is known for its harsh character, especially on a cloudless day. But before the sun rises, or after the sun sets? That’s a different story.

When the sun is below the horizon, it won’t cast harsh light – clouds or not. Instead, you’ll get beautiful colors and soft shadows, allowing for some lovely light in your landscape photos.

At these times of day, you can also consider including the sky in your photo and getting a lovely gradient of color. I’m particularly fond of the Belt of Venus, where the Earth’s shadow is cast on its own atmosphere. This time of day doesn’t last long but can lead to some amazing photos – photos that you couldn’t get any other way, including on a day with beautiful clouds.

4. Look for the Moon

A cloudless day can be the best time to experiment with the art of moon photography! I always love a chance to photograph our celestial neighbor as a landscape photographer. Sometimes, I even secretly hope for a cloudless sky for this exact reason.

One potential challenge when photographing the moon is to get plenty of detail on both the moon and the landscape itself. It’s only easy to accomplish when the moon is a little higher in the sky, paired with a brighter landscape around it (as in the photo above).

Although you can get around this limitation with HDR or other image blending techniques, I’d also say that you can simply embrace it! A blown-out moon is not necessarily a bad thing in landscape photography. It simply depends upon the image.

5. Try Out Milky Way Photography

There is one type of landscape photography that almost always benefits from a cloudless day: Milky Way photography.

Actually, I have a funny story about that. There was only one time during both trips that the sky filled with clouds, and it was the night we were doing Milky Way photography in Colorado! Can you believe it?

The good news is that we still had a clear view of the Milky Way (see below) for more than an hour before the clouds rolled in. And the clouds themselves had an interesting shape that wasn’t so bad for photography. But seriously, what bizarre luck!

6. Embrace the Blue Sky

You may not want to have a blue sky in your landscape photos most of the time, but who says that’s always going to be the case? Sometimes, for various reasons, a blue expanse is exactly what your photo needs at the top of the frame.

Here, for example, I think it’s a good complement to the rest of this minimalist photo:

While I won’t deny that some puffy clouds would have looked nice there, too, it’s a good reminder that sometimes an empty sky isn’t going to harm your photo at all. Like all things in photography, it’s about the mood you want to convey. While you wouldn’t want an empty sky all the time, or probably most of the time, it does sometimes fit the landscape better than anything else.

And there you have it – six different approaches you can take to landscape photography on a cloudless day! I hope this article gave you some food for thought as a landscape photographer. Let me know in the comments if you have any questions or tips of your own for landscape photography under a blue sky.