How to take photographs of deep blue sky

I wish to share some of my own experiences and methods that I normally use when taking blue sky photographs. Of cause, those are not my own methods but rather are general widely used methods that everyone else are doing. Let me cut straight to the points.. .

Foreword : Don’t expect any of these will work if there is no blue sky seen. Unless you want to paste in a Blue sky from other photo.

Basic rules / steps to follow

• Best time to take nice blue sky is in the morning or when the sun is at the horizon, at an angle other then is on top of your head.

• Always use front light when taking the photographs. (Meant the Sun is at your back and not in front of you, best effect is sun + you + front scene is in straight line (± 45 degree angle) unless you are using polarizer)

• If your camera has White Balance setting, set it to “Sun / Day” mode. If you have custom WB setting and WB reference card then is even easier. I am personally using WhiBal Ref card for custom WB.

• Under expose the picture slightly by 1/3 ~ 1/2 stops depends on the scene if it is not clips on the dark area.

• If you have a polarizer, it has the capability to eliminates the reflection of the air particles and produce a much deeper / richer blue sky. There are many instructions on the web explaining how to best use a Polarizer to achieve that. So, i am not going to repeat those and you can simply googling around and you will find lot of them.
  • The sample below were taken few years ago at Cameron Highland for comparison. The 1/2 left is without CPL and right 1/2 is with CPL. ( Circular Polarizer is used for Auto focus camera )

CPL test during Cameron trip

• Try this if you don’t do post processing on computer, if not.. skip to the next set.

  • Increase the contrast slightly

    Increase the Saturation slightly

    (If you are canon dSLR user, switch to “Landscape” picture style)

• If you do post processing on computer, try to achieve these using your favorite editing software.
  • Increase contrast via the Curve adjustment. ( A slight S curve will do )
  • Adjust color wheel / HUE adjustment on Blue channel within the range of 0 ~ ±10 depends on effect you see.
  • Increase overall saturation as about 10% ~ 20% ( beware of over doing it )
  • If you want to achieve more “fake” / “dramatic” deep blue, use selective area on the sky and decrease further exposure on that area.
  • The following comparison example is edit using software in stead of using CPL. Left is before, right is after, using the few setting I listed up here.

I hopes my sharing on my Blue sky taking could benefits some of you that interested / curious on how do I achieve that. Let me know if you have further questions / suggestions or even wish to shares your own view.