Photography Tricks — Make The Sun Show Its Beams

Greetings, friends!

You might have noticed I sometimes share some of the tricks about various photographic effects. I decided to make it a series. How about a tag called #phototricks?

Today I am showing you how to make the Sun (or any other major light source for that matter) appear as a star, spreading its beams in all directions.

You can achieve it on random sometimes and yet, you can actually control it and cause the effect yourselves.

You can do two things:

1. Take such a position so that the light source peaks from around a corner. A wall, or a tree, or a mountain slope, etc.

You might actually not need that if...

1. You set a high Aperture F number, meaning a closed aperture. The aperture settings define the small opening between tiny metal lamels that overlap each other in a circle inside your lens body (not the glass piece itself but the whole mechanical unit).

You may combine the two conditions just to be sure. Like here:

Settings:

Aperture F 16; Shutter Speed 1/30 sec.; ISO 200; Focal Length 21 mm.

Or you can make some more efforts to help one of the conditions help you in achieving at least a partial effect such as this one. If the leaves were not moving at all and my hands were even more stable, I could have caught it in a better way but that's kind of showing that same effect again:

Settings:

Aperture F 5.6; Shutter Speed 1/400 sec.; ISO 400; Focal Length 29 mm.

My Aperture is relatively open here, as you can see — that F 5.6 choice.

But what helps me get the Sun to show us its rays is the secondary natural aperture-like effect that the leaves make themselves. They are overlapping to some extent, leaving an opening and enough edges between them. I had to play some with my own position to get this done. Or rather, with the camera's position. Every millimeter mattered here.

Good luck!

You can read a more detailed beginners-level lesson on Aperture Here.

If you want to discuss something about it, don't forget you can leave a comment below!

Thanks for viewing!

Yours,

Manol