Summer Photography Guide – A Fine Art Photographer’s Summer Handbook

What makes summer such a powerful yet challenging season for photography?

How can intense light, heat, and busy environments become creative tools instead of obstacles?

Find out in this article how to embrace summer’s extremes and transform them into striking fine art photography work.

Let’s set this straight from the beginning. I LOVE summer! Summer is a season that pulses with energy, light, color, and movement. It is the season when all the forces of nature come to a culmination and all creatures of the Earth live their best moments. It’s also the season I was born in :). For all these reasons and more, I love summer.

And because I also love photography, I want to talk to you about doing photography in the summer. Why do I want to do that? Because summer has some special characteristics that play an important role in the photography we make. Some of these characteristics are positive, while others present challenges.

To help you get the best of the positives and deal with the challenges, in this summer photography guide, I explore the distinct character of summer photography and give you some insights into how to approach the season with intentionality and artistic vision.

INTRODUCTION

Not everybody likes to shoot in the summer, but for those who do, regardless of whether you are working with fine art photography or documentary photography, in black and white or color, architectural, landscape, or street photography, summer presents plenty of opportunities, but also plenty of challenges.

The intensity of the sun, the large amount of people traveling that gather around interesting locations especially in the cities, and the practicalities of working in the heat, all play a role in the creative, technical and logistic decisions we make when shooting in the summer.

With so many special characteristics, no wonder summer is not considered the best season for photography. But who says we should be afraid of challenges? On the contrary, many times, challenges can spur creativity and give you the chance to create original photographs you wouldn’t have considered without the challenge.

THE SUMMER LIGHT AND CONTRAST – FRIEND OR FOE?  

One of the defining features of summer is its light. Days are long, with high sun angles and plenty of natural brightness. At the same time, except for sunset and sunrise, the level of contrast is much higher than during other seasons due to the intensity of light. Regardless if you work with color or black and white photography, this intense light and contrast can be a double-edged sword.

In black and white photography, harsh light creates deep shadows and strong contrasts, conditions that can be dramatic and expressive if used well. It allows you to create outstanding images by focusing on powerful shapes that cast interesting shadows on the ground or other objects, and by capturing the relationship between these shapes and their shadows.

However, the midday sun can also produce overly harsh highlights and flatten architectural textures, and any kind of pictures or details, because when light and shadow are at extremes, without intermediate mid-tones, you start losing the sense of three-dimensionality.  

And if you know me, you know that I am a strong advocate for creating three-dimensional shapes in photography. This is why the Photography Drawing method I created focuses on creating three-dimensional shapes and depth. It is because I believe emphasizing space and depth can and will improve a photograph way beyond a good composition and what is generally considered good light. If you want to have a look at the theory and practical solutions to create Photography Drawing, you can read more in this article about Photography Drawing.  Also, you can get insight and practical advice on how to apply this technique in the tutorial Black and White Fine Art Processing with the Method of Photography Drawing. This is an excellent method to apply to B&W photography, but it can be used for creating three-dimensionality and depth in color photography too.

For color photography, the color saturation and clarity summer light provides can be spectacular, especially in landscape photography. But the intensity of light can also create color imbalances and blown highlights much easier than when the light is more neutral.

To avoid this harsh light and contrast, an alternative is to shoot during very early morning and late afternoon when the light sweetens and the contrasts become softer.

However, if you don’t want to lose the time in between early morning and late afternoon, the solution is adapting to the conditions you have instead of trying to avoid them and explore how you can use this characteristic that could be considered a disadvantage, as a creative element in your work.

Another technical way of dealing with intense light and contrast during the day is to bracket your exposures and then blend images with different intensities of light in such a way that you “introduce” mid-tones where you need them.

This is a more advanced technique that I am teaching in my workshops and mentoring courses, and it can be a truly powerful technique when applied well. You can get a glimpse over some of its characteristics in this Complete Guide to Luminosity Masks where you can also download a free Luminosity Masks Action, the 16-bit 7-Level (en)Visionography LumMask, which you can use to apply this technique and any technique that involves luminosity masks.

And, of course, you can join us for my next workshop, where we not only shoot amazing locations in the best places in the world but also dive deep into working with all these advanced post-processing techniques. Have a look at my workshop page to see when and where the next workshop will be.

A good tip for the summer, which works in all seasons but in the summer is even more helpful, is to scout your locations in advance to see how the light behaves at different times of day and how you can use the intensity of light, the direction and size of the shadows, and the interaction between the shapes forming your subject and the shape of the shadow.

In the summer, scouting your location beforehand is more important than in other seasons because you have many more sunny days when the shadows will play an important role. When you shoot on a cloudy day, you don’t need to worry about the direction of the shadows too much, but when the sun is shining, that can be a defining element in your image. So, scouting and making notes will help you make the best decision technically and creatively while working with the conditions you have.

You can either scout your locations in person or you could use Google maps or an app like PhotoPills that will give you information about the angle of the sun, the size and direction of the shadows and the lit vs. shadowed surfaces in your scene, so you can decide your shooting angle and composition in advance.

SHOOTING ARCHITECTURE AND STREET PHOTOGRAPHY IN A BUSY CITY IN THE SUMMER

Cities in the summer transform completely. Streets are filling with tourists, outdoor cafés filled with people are extending onto the sidewalks, and notable locations or monuments are often very busy.

If you shoot street photography, this abundance of life can be a wonderful playground. But if you are a fine art architecture photographer looking for pure forms and solitude, this abundance of people may be a complication.

Street photography can benefit from this movement and the large amount of people outside the summer. It can give you variation, offer you many stories to capture, and allow you to choose your human subjects among the many people who are out and about in this season. You can use individual subjects or crowds as compositional elements, you can play with shadows, silhouettes, and interactions between different people or between people and the locations they populate. The options are endless, which makes your life as a street photographer easier.

Conversely, if your work focuses on more minimal scenes or shooting architecture, you may not want to have people in your shots. In this case, one option would be shooting early mornings, especially early mornings during weekends if you want to shoot popular locations, or choose more quiet areas, locations that are not very touristic but that you can interpret in an original way, and leave the busy locations for the other seasons.

An excellent option when shooting in crowded spaces, which in the summer are many of the well-known locations in a city, is to use the technique of long exposure instead of shooting short exposures. Long exposure allows you to retain in an image only the immobile subjects, while everything that moves will disappear: people walking, cars passing through the scene, and generally, any kind of motion that happens during the interval of time you are shooting.

Long exposure is my favorite technique of shooting during summer in the city, and I warmly recommend it. Not only for the beautiful effects of smoothing water or clouds, which is the classic look of long exposure images, but also for the practical uses of reducing a crowded scene to its essence and creating a minimal, uncluttered look.

In practical terms, to be able to remove all the motion in the scene, you will need to use a long enough exposure so people, cars, and everything that is moving through the scene have the time to disappear from the frame. You may need 30 seconds, or you may need five minutes or even more. It all depends on how many people (cars etc.) are moving in the scene and how fast they are moving.

An alternative approach when wanting to minimize the human presence in an image or the presence of objects that are moving, like cars, for instance, however, without making them disappear completely, is to shoot a shorter long exposure, which will create the impression of motion blur. Again, the exposure length you will choose depends on the amount of blur you envision for your image and on the speed of the moving objects who are passing through the scene. That means that you will work most of the time with seconds unless, let’s say, the people in the scene are moving very slowly, in which case you will need to lengthen the exposure to 30 seconds, or one to several minutes, to allow for the motion blur to build up.

If you want to get more insight into working with long exposure, and learn how to use different exposure lengths to create the effects you envision, I have here an excellent and very extensive tutorial on long exposure that you can consult to get more comfortable with this powerful technique.

Another challenge when shooting in the city during the summer is that, because the days are longer and the angle of the sun is higher, you will encounter more cases when the sun will create glare or will reflect strongly, particularly from glass façades and surfaces, which may limit your freedom as for choosing your angles. I would say that, after the large number of people in the streets, this is the biggest challenge you have in the summer when the sun is shining.

One option in the case where the sun is reflected off the surface you are shooting is to simply include the sun in the composition. However, that is not always desirable, and your intention may be to shoot that composition without the reflection of the sun. Obviously, you can wait for the sun to move until the reflection is gone or come back later at a different moment, but sometimes that is not possible, especially when you’re traveling, and you don’t have a long time at your disposition. In this case, the next best workaround is to use a polarizing filter to limit the intensity of the reflection. The polarizing filter has the quality to remove reflections or limit them significantly when the sun is at high angles. Even if you cannot completely remove the reflection, the polarizing filter will limit it considerably so you can clean up the rest of it in post-processing.

Another good use of the polarizing filter is to use it to darken blue skies. The skies are very frequently blue in the summer; this is why the polarizing filter is most useful in the summer. It can intensify the blue color in the sky, which, if you convert the image to black and white, can result in rich dark grays, and it can also intensify the contrast between the sky and the clouds for the days when you have both. So this is another filter that, together with the ND filters, shouldn’t miss from your summer photography bag.

LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY IN THE SUMMER – BRILLIANT BUT DEMANDING

Summer landscapes can feel alive – rich green foliage, blooming wildflowers, intense colors, dramatic sunsets. But they also pose challenges like heat haze, busy tourist spots, and sometimes uninspiring harsh or flat midday light.

Mountains and coastal regions often have more dynamic weather and light patterns than inland areas. Often, you may encounter afternoon storms or fog that can add mood and drama. Summer also brings more accessible hiking trails, allowing you to reach places that might be closed in winter. However, be cautious when hiking in stormy weather, as it can be hazardous, especially in open spaces where you are more vulnerable to lightning strikes or on mountain slopes that can become slippery, or even worse, you may even risk being caught in a landslide if the conditions are extreme.

As always with landscape photography, the photography part comes only after the safety aspect of being in nature. The first thought in your mind has to be that you have to respect nature and its power and unpredictability, and you have to plan for any conditions. When you are in the mountains, you have to rely on yourself, so you need to know how to do that. It’s not very difficult if you’re well-prepared, but it can become risky if you don’t give enough attention to planning and preparation.

Summer transforms the landscape with a clarity and fullness that is at once liberating and demanding. The world feels wide open, physically accessible, visually intense, and emotionally expansive. Trails once buried under snow reveal themselves, remote cliffs become accessible, and coastal paths dry out into firm ground, separating land from sea. But within this accessibility lies a paradox of creative choice: when everything is visible, what do you choose to see?

For a fine art photographer, especially when shooting in black and white, this season can be both a gift and a challenge. Summer landscapes are abundant, but this abundance of elements you can see in front of you can easily turn into visual noise and clutter. The richness of the scene requires more effort to identify the essence of the scene and even more to capture that in a meaningful way. While spring or autumn offer a softer atmosphere and light, along with mist, color gradations, and temperate shadows, summer brings everything together in one explosion of action and color. In the summer, you have to respect the power of the sun and learn to use it as a creative asset, instead of avoiding it.

In this respect, in the summer, light in itself can become the subject. Midday sun casts deep, intense shadows. The rocks, sand, and grass (sometimes dry grass) are revealed in high contrast, offering bold tonal variations for black and white photography. This sharpness can translate beautifully into fine art images, where you can achieve abstraction and minimalism not through absence or negative space, as you may predominantly do during the other seasons, but through precision and control of the intensity of light. A single tree standing under a summer hot sky voided of clouds becomes a monument to nature. Dry land with cracks in the soil can become an invitation to meditate on emptiness, and on what lies beneath the abundance of water we can see in other seasons. In monochrome, the absence of color helps you focus on texture, contrast, and the psychological dimension of shape and space.

Something that is usually avoided when shooting landscape photography, as well as when shooting architecture, but this is even more of a “rule” when we talk about landscape photography, is to not shoot against the sun but shoot with the sun placed laterally or behind you. This is a good rule if you want to focus on rich colors and “correct” contrast. But this doesn’t mean you cannot break this rule. Instead of trying to avoid the sun, you can instead focus on including it in your composition and using it as a compositional and creative element. Another advantage of shooting against the sun is that it gives you more possibilities of shooting a scene, and it allows you to shoot throughout the day without limiting your shooting hours to the traditional early morning and late afternoon. You free yourself from the pressure of only shooting during the Golden hour, which can open up a vast amount of possibilities and creative choices. Personally, I don’t believe in good or bad light, and I like to shoot in any conditions because this is when you can experiment and explore new approaches and discover surprising ideas and solutions.

However, when you shoot throughout the day, you have to be careful not to succumb to the temptation to shoot everything or overshoot, which can lead to creative fatigue and visual saturation. You still need to be selective, and this is where having a vision and honing your personal style will help. Then, you will know what you are looking for and what resonates with your vision and who you are as an artist.

That being said, the best light, early morning and late evening, remains sacred, especially in landscape photography. The Golden hour has a special effect in the summer, when the warmth of the low sun tempers the harshness of light and transforms otherwise  ordinary scenery into outstanding ones.

Still, much of the day is dominated by harsh, direct sunlight. For color photography, this can lead to washed-out hues and flat images, unless used with a specific purpose, such as emphasizing aridity, heat, or glare. In black and white, you don’t care too much about the color, so the challenge becomes how to handle extreme contrast without losing detail in the shadows or blowing out the highlights. Shooting with neutral density (ND) filters, graduated ND filters, and high-dynamic-range bracketing can help retain tonal subtlety, especially when the sun is at a high angle and strong.

Another particularity of summer is the atmosphere itself. Heat can create waves of distortion rising from the ground, which can soften or blur distant elements in a scene. This is very visible and a real problem, especially when shooting with long lenses when because of the heat waves you can get distortions in the shapes of the objects that are far away. In this case, if you want to retain sharpness and the original outlines of the objects you are shooting, you have to shoot at a different time. But if you want to focus on abstraction or use these effects creatively, you can create very original images.

So again, it is about accepting the conditions and working with them creatively instead of avoiding them completely and limiting yourself only to the typical times of shooting landscape photography, which will give you better conditions, but it can also give you more conventional images. While working with the challenges can be the very element bringing originality to your work.

To create landscape photography in summer is to enter into a conversation with light at its most intense moments. It means respecting it and working with it under its own “rules”. This requires for you to not just observe but to interpret what you see in front of you and create something different out of it. You need to learn how to cut through the visual noise created by the abundance of light, color, and shape and focus on details or particular aspects of the scene you are shooting.

Here is a very detailed article where I’m advising you on how to prepare for a landscape photography workshop or landscape photography trip, where you will find many more good ideas that you can use also when shooting in the summer.

DEALING WITH HEAT – YOUR CAMERA EQUIPMENT AND YOU

Always keep in mind when you’re shooting for an extensive time in the summer that your camera and lenses can overheat in direct sun, especially the mirrorless systems that run hot by nature, and especially when you’re shooting medium format. Battery life may also degrade faster. Also, seeing your LCD screen may become difficult in bright light, and your sensor is at a higher risk of dust when changing lenses in dusty, dry environments.

So, plan for breaks when you put your camera in your bag or go inside or in a shaded place to give it time to cool off, and consider a hoodman loupe that you can apply on your LCD screen to shade it from sunlight when checking your photos.

Not only your camera, but you too need to protect yourself from heat and direct sunlight. When you shoot in the summer, especially on sunny days, you run the risk of getting dehydrated, getting sunburned or becoming fatigued faster than when working in cooler conditions. So always plan for that. Make sure you cover your head and yourself when shooting out in the sun for longer periods of time, wear light long sleeves and preferably  long pants instead of shorts, always have plenty of water with you, especially when hiking on remote trails or isolated beaches, and don’t push yourself too hard in the middle of the day, especially when the temperatures are very high. I made many mistakes and got sunburned many times until I learned these lessons, and it still happens from time to time that I’m not well prepared when shooting in the summer, especially when I don’t start the day with the intention to shoot extensively, but become inspired as I go and forget about protecting myself, which always leads to regrets and sunburns. So I think I’m in the best position to give you this advice :).

Conclusion

EMBRACE THE SUMMER WITH A CREATIVE EYE

Summer photography is about harnessing intense energy and light without being overwhelmed by it. If you shoot fine art photography, summer can offer you an interesting array of contrasts – bright and dark tones, crowded and solitary spaces, intense energy and stillness. All this, with the right approach, can help you create outstanding images. With careful preparation, a creative approach, an attentive eye, and a vivid imagination, this magnificent season can become a vast source of inspiration, offering you plenty of original approaches to photography that will enrich your creative journey.

So don’t be afraid of shooting in the summer, at any time, any place, and in any circumstances. At the end of the day, shooting in the summer is not about avoiding the sun, the heat, or the crowds. On the contrary, it’s about integrating them into your vision and using the limitations to push yourself creatively. That’s where the art begins. And if you ask me, I love that about summer.otography is to create something that is different than the real world and in this way explore new ideas and trigger interest and emotion in the viewer.

If you want to learn more and go even deeper into the subject of shooting black and white fine art photography and color photography in any conditions and get great results, you can join me at one of my upcoming workshops or my online and in-person courses where we talk about this and other fine art photography subjects in great detail.

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If you are interested in knowing more about black and white fine art photography, inspiration, (en)Visionography, long exposure photography, architecture fine art photography, and many other subjects, feel free to read my other tutorials and have a look at my books and courses.