Lens flare is one of those things that happens a lot by accident in photography, but if you are looking to get lens flare in your imagery then it can go one of two ways; looking really shit, or awesome and interesting. It doesn’t work with everything, an image needs to be thought out before or while taking it. Obviously there are a lot of contributing factors to taking an image, but the main one is lighting. When shooting outdoors lighting is out of your control so you need to use it to the best advantage for the effect you are going for, which can prove more difficult depending on the situation. I have done plenty of shoots where I have had to very quickly rethink due to lighting levels and normally come out with something more interesting as I havn’t been over thinking things and just gone with the flow to make everything slot together nicely.

I am a fan of lens flare, but only when it is done well. We have all taken photos on our phones where the sun is too bright and the whole image looks washed out, or the lens flare totally conceals your friends face or place/object you are photographing, I know I have. It has taken me a long time of trial and error and messing around with sunlight, but I find some of the best lighting for lens flare, if thats what you are looking to capture in your images, is when the sun is very low in the evenings. It hits the lens at the right angles and can create some beautiful colours and interesting marks within the image.

This is what I like about using natural lighting, its so unpredictable and changes all the time that you can go to a shoot with an ideal image in your head and walk away with something a lot more interesting and much better than your idea due to working with the lighting available. If creating ‘pretty’ (God, I hate that word!) picture is what you want to do then try doing some early evening shots with the sunset as the background to your images. The easy ones are using the sun to backlight an object or person to create a sillhouette and angle the camera well to catch the light rays on the glass of the lens itself.

These two images were taken while on a walk in Falmouth, Cornwall. The evenings from April to July 2014 while I was down there were beautiful, so I often took my camera out with no specific ideas in my head, just if something caught my eye or the light hit my friend in an interesting way then I would stop and try to capture it the way I could see it. Admittedly, these two images were not taken with intent of capturing lens flare, it was more because of the colours in the first one, and the second image her hair and the reflection in the water caught my eye. The first image I took on the camera had a beautiful flare so I worked with it and ended up with these images. If you spot something in the images that you like, work quickly and carry on focusing on getting the effect gained before the clouds move, or lighting changes.

Before I started university, If I saw lens flare on an image I would instantly get rid of it, but I like to play around a lot more now, and something so simple and easy as lens flare can totally change an image, so I kept them and worked on them to have images I was totally happy with.

The portrait of my friend really caught my eye because of the green slice in the bottom of her face and the couple of light spots. It was more the colouring that made me use the image and that it made a simple portrait slightly more interesting for viewers to look at.

You don’t have to be shooting during the day to get this to happen, I lived next to Falmouth Docks for 2 years and there was this very bright light that pointed towards my building that used to piss me off something cronic when trying to sleep. Every now and again the sky would be crystal clear and the cranes would be very close to the building with the bright light illuminating it so, at 3am, out came the camera and some very long shutter speeds. I just wanted to take a photo to show my dad what I meant and ended up with a really beautiful, industrial image.

This, again, wasn’t intentionally shot to gain the flare, but when I saw it was picking it up due to the intensity of the lighting and the angle of my camera I worked with it to get the best out of it that I could. Its a lot more subtle than the images above, but because of the brightness against the darkness and the vignetting created by the lighting, all the attention is drawn in to the centre of the image and then lets the eye wonder becuase of the light rays and the flare spots.

Just go out and let your mind and your camera create. Don’t go out and think, just do! You never know what you are going to create or see along the way ☺

All Images are from my website www.leefoulger.co.uk 2014