Making the most of bad lighting

A few weeks ago, I went for a hike, and needless to say, I brought my camera along. Although I started my hike fairly early in the morning, it was mid-morning before I knew it, and the sun was shining harshly overhead. Obviously, it was time to pack up the camera until the light got better, right?

Wrong. It was time to find a way to use the light to my advantage. I found myself walking beside a stream with the sun playing off some energetic ripples, but the stream by itself wasn’t much to look at — it was pretty muddy, and the harsh light just wasn’t helping it at all. There were some wildflowers along the bank of the stream, though, and I was able to position myself so I was looking through the flowers and picking up the sparkles behind them. I used a narrow DOF to make the sparkles blur completely into the round lamps in the background of these pictures.

I like the way these turned out, but I’m really happy that I was able to salvage some decent photos from some pretty crummy conditions.