Capturing the Blue Sky

While at a wedding in Temecula, California over the weekend, I stayed at this gorgeous house near the area's famous wineries. In between the wedding festivities, I snuck out at sunrise with my camera and explored the grounds.

It was a bright, sunny morning, which made it challenging to capture the blue sky and the photo subject without shadows. So here's my trick to balance the colorful sky with a well-lit photo subject -- focus your camera on the blue sky before taking the photograph of the photo subject.

On most digital cameras with auto focus turned on, you can push down the shutter button halfway to set the focus. Using this feature, you would focus the camera on the blue sky and then once you have focused on the blue sky, without lifting the button, you would shift the lens to your photo subject and take the picture. This trick usually works in most occasions, but you may need to play around with the focus to get it right.