As a professional real estate photographer, I’ve learned that shooting under the bright sun can be both a blessing and a challenge. While natural sunlight can truly enhance a property’s appeal, it can also produce harsh shadows, blown-out highlights, and unbalanced exposures when mismanaged.
While mastering outdoor photography in full sunlight will ultimately come down to understanding light direction, employing the proper gear, and balancing exposure to show every detail a prospective buyer is looking to see.
The following is an example of how I approach bright, sunny shoots, in order to showcase properties at their best.
Timing Is Everything – Shooting in the Golden Hours
The very first rule of outdoor real estate photography is knowing when to shoot. Midday sunlight is quite harsh and unforgiving, resulting in dark shadows and blown-out colors. Ideally, you want to shoot in the early morning or later afternoon, what we call the “golden hours.”
This is when sunlight is softer, warmer, and most flattering. The elongated shadows lend dimension to your shots and give exteriors a natural inviting glow.
Pro tip: Use weather apps or sun-tracking tools to plan your shoot depending on the sun’s location.
Use Polarizing Filters to Control Reflections
Glare is one of the main problems of shooting in bright sun – especially glare coming from windows, cars, or water. A circular polarizing filter should be a staple in every real estate photographer’s toolbox.
A filter like this can cut down reflections, darken blue skies, and create a more saturated color effect for your images yielding richer, more vibrant images directly from the camera.
Bonus – This filter comes in very handy when photographing homes with glass fronts, pools, or any metal accents.
Managing Harsh Shadows with Fill Flash or Reflectors
In bright sunlight, deep, unwanted shadows brew quickly under eaves, porches, or overhangs. In these cases, you need to utilize fill flash or a reflector to allow you to illuminate those darker areas quickly without compromising highlight exposure.
When I’m shooting in especially large premises, I prefer to work with fill flash using portable strobes or bounce boards to attempt to control contrast from the upper light source down and generally maintain a natural light balance throughout the frame.
Adjust Camera Settings for Balanced Exposure
When working outdoors, your camera settings can make the shot. Here’s my go-to setup for bright, sunny conditions:
- ISO: Keep it low (100–200) to avoid overexposure.
- Aperture: Use f/8 to f/11 for sharpness and depth.
- Shutter Speed: Adjust to match brightness while maintaining detail in highlights.
- White Balance: Set to ‘Daylight’ or custom-calibrate using a grey card.
If you’re shooting interiors and exteriors in the same session, always bracket exposures for HDR blending later in post-production.
Shoot from the Right Angles
Light direction plays a crucial role in how your property photographs. Avoid shooting directly into the sun—this can cause lens flare and loss of contrast. Instead, position yourself with the sun behind you or at a 45° angle to the subject.
This not only enhances the property’s texture and color but also helps define architectural lines and landscaping details.
Tip: Use trees or tall structures as natural diffusers if the light is too harsh.
Don’t Forget Post-Processing
Even with the finest technique, bright sunlight often warrants detailed thorough, carefully considering your post-production approach. While each tool I explore in the next sections provides different methods of correcting highlights, recovering shadow detail, and adjusting color temperature, I am most comfortable correcting in post-production for photos taken in bright sunlight, especially if shooting in consecutive conditions creates undesirable file images.
Moderately adjusting items—of, balancing exposure and achieving tonal variations in the sky—will yield a visually pleasing photo; the more subtle the adjustment, the more polished photo looks and appears to the viewer, all while remaining authentic to the subject. Generally speaking, properties sell more quickly at the authentic appearance, as opposed to the polished version of processing and editing.
Embrace the Sun, and Illustrate a Story
Bright sunlight does not always have to become the enemy. The sun flares, the reflections, and the crisp true shadows can all tell a dynamic story in this lifestyle image that you take. “Create photos that show life, (the sun falling into the living area through large windows, the light reflecting off of the personal patio space)”, and show the life to potential buyers, and they can see themselves living there. This is a goal of spaces in real estate photography.
Takeaway Thoughts
Real estate photography pure an ideal environment is not easy in conditions of bright sunlight; it requires patience, previously planned-out procedures (note-taking), and confidence towards technical capabilities, however, it’s possible to receive stunning results. Once you have a grasp of the conditions with the appropriate time frame, a lens system (a fast lens system requires less light), and a post-production workflow, anyone can turn harsh light into a natural component of the photography designed to illustrate strengths and weaknesses in the environment or subject matter. Every photo tells a story of the moment the photo is taken.
