Once you get the hang of video, be sure to monetize it by becoming a contributor to Adobe Stock.
When it comes to shooting video outdoors, it can be quite challenging. You can’t overpower the sun, so you need to learn to work with it. You’ll need to position your camera and your subjects so the light is attractive and enhances the scene (instead of ruining it).
Of course, nothing is ever easy: The sun will move across the sky; objects like trees and buildings or even a passing cloud will obstruct the sun; the sun’s color temperature will vary depending on the time of day you’re shooting; and the position of the sun will change based on geography and the date. Therefore, you must learn to respect and work with the sun when shooting in daylight.
Poring Over the Footage
We arrived too early when visiting the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Cape Canaveral, Florida. So we let the kids explore the outside a bit. My son, of course, was attracted to the giant swarm of ants and a rainwater drain on the side of the museum, which placed him in some pretty intense shadows.
The top image shows a split screen before and after I applied color correction to the image. In this case I used a Levels adjustment to lift the exposure a bit and a saturation adjustment to boost the color. Both adjustments are standard in just about every video editing application. The area above the red line shows you the image with the filters applied, and the area below shows the original image. It’s important to remember that you should get the image “close” in-camera, but then you can “finish” it when you edit.
Join us each Saturday for the next installment of this weekly series.
Once you get the hang of video, be sure to monetize it by becoming a contributor to Adobe Stock.
