Pixiq

The title of this post relates to a song written by Noël Coward, which was first performed in The Third Little Show at the Music Box Theatre, New York, on 1 June 1931.  The full length of the recurring line is : Mad Dogs and Englishmen go out in the midday sun.

No self-respecting landscape photographer would dream of taking landscapes out in the open other than around the 'golden hours' of sunrise and sunset and never around mid-day. Direct midday sun can indeed be very is harsh, with the result that images may appear blown out. Recently, as I was editing images from a trip abroad, and began to find shots I had taken around midday I realized this time of day works for certain subjects. It all depends on the latitude, the time of year, the quality of light, type of habitat and, not least, on the tonal values of the subject. For example, I would not take large white flowers such as magnolias or calla lilies lit by sun at midday.

On the other side of the coin however, some flowers fully open out their petals only when the sun shines.  Off the top of my head I can think of crocuses, California poppies, day-flowering water lilies and gentians. Not only do they all close up at night but also in cold and windy weather. There is nothing more frustrating than finding an alpine meadow brimming with gentians – all with their sumptuous blue trumpets tightly closed.

The ability of sunflowers and other daisy-type flowers to track the sun by moving their heads, is known as heliotropism. The sunflower has a narrow neck where expansion of the stem occurs at different rates on different sides of the stem. In the northern hemisphere, the flower tilts to the east, as the day progresses, the growth is stronger on the north side, so that by the evening the flower faces west. At night, with more growth on the west side, the flower faces east by the next morning, ready to begin tracking again.

Slot canyons are not worth taking unless lit by sunlight bounced off rocks to give a wonderful range of shades and hues of the red rocks. Yet the sun only reaches down into deep and narrow slot canyons when it is overhead either side of midday.

Shooting birds in flight looking straight up at the sky as well as taller flowers when the sun is overhead, works wells with backlighting revealing the overlapping patterns of feathers or petals. Sometimes, additional fill-flash may help but is by no means always necessary. 

Light and shadow is an effective way of helping to isolate a subject and most often it is used when the subject it well lit and the background is in shadow, but a subject in shade can be taken so that it 'pops' from a sunlit background.

Sun beaming onto water can reveal fish basking or animals swimming in shallows. Depending on the time of low water, rock pools may only become accessible in the middle of the day, when the high angled light may help to illuminate pools lined with dark seaweeds. If not, a polarizing filter used when the camera is looking at an acute angle to the water, rather than directly overhead, can help to tone down skylight reflections.

Butterflies and dragonflies are most active on warm sunny plays;, the former visiting flowers for their nectar and dragonflies hawking back and forth within their territory to grab unsuspecting aerial prey. Desert lizards tend to be active at midday in spring and fall, but during the summer when the temperature rises, they restrict their activity to the cooler mornings and afternoons; although one species is active around midday in summer – a time of day when predators are not active.

The middle of the day is also a useful time to scout around for subjects, which if not lit in an ideal way, can be noted for taking in better light later the same day or early the next.

So there is no excuse for photographers to take a siesta around midday when there are plenty of ways they can utilize this time of day!  All these images were taken during the period spanning one hour before and one hour after midday.