A few more reasons to have an umbrella available when out shooting

I always have a big golf umbrella in my car and have found a few uses for it besides keeping the rain off of me. In this tip I will tell you about two different times that I have found having my large umbrella with me came in very handy.

The first time it came in handy was when I was shooting some big white magnolia flowers that were out in the sun. The problem I was having was the whites kept getting blown out. If I exposed for the flower the background was off and if I exposed for the over all picture my whites on the flower were blown out and I lost all the detail. What I needed was something to block the direct sun to keep my flowers from getting blown out. This made me think about the big umbrella that I carried in the car. It was easy to hold and it provided instant shade from the direct sunlight giving me the picture I was looking for.

The second use I found for it was when I was shooting a bunch of boats at a marina. I was shooting with a wide angle lens and with angle the sun was located at it was causing me to get lens flare in every shot so I got out me trusty umbrella and used it to block the sun hitting my lens. This was a very simple answer to a big problem and all the lens flare was eliminated. Changing the angle that I was shooting from could have eliminated the lens flare also but was not an option at the time.

I have found having my umbrella with me has been very useful on several different occasions. Having any size umbrella will do, I just happen to have a large one that I carry all of the time. Jeff