How to Create Sun Star Photography

Hey, what's up, guys? Professional outdoor photographer David Johnson here for Outdoor Photography Guide. And today I'm out at a local farm and I'm getting ready to set up for some photos using a sun star as a highlight feature in my composition in the bottom-right corner. Now that got me thinking, well, how do you even produce a sun star? And it's actually really easy to do and it can add a lot of dynamic impact to your images when you use one. Basically, using your camera in either aperture priority or manual mode, what you need to do is set up your shot using something like F/16 for your aperture. Something even F/22, F/18 is gonna give you the best sun star possible because the opening in your aperture is very small when you do that. And what happens, as the sunlight enters your lens when you're using a very small aperture like that, is the refraction that occurs through the blades of your aperture create that sunburst that can make that dynamic impact to your images. Now, compositionally, how do you do this too? Now, I think sun stars can be a great complimentary subject to your main subject of the image. What you want to do with this is set up the sun so that it's right on the edge of a hard line. That can be something like the horizon line. That can be a cloud. That can be a rock face. That can be anything you want it to be. Or you can even have a big sun star prominently placed in negative space in your composition, like a bright blue sky. Just having a big sun star there is really gonna add a lot of dynamic impact to your image and covering up a lot of that negative space that can be overwhelming and distracting to your overall image. So what I like to do here is either have that on a hard edge or just up in a blue sky. My favorite way to add sun stars to my images is through those outdoor adventure photographs and having it highlighted either through a forest or again, through a nice rock face. Now for this location specifically, this is what it looked like in time-lapse format. However, I did actually pull a still from this location too. And this is what it looks like with the sun star added to the composition here. So get out there and try this out. Add some sun stars to your compositions and your framing, because it can really, again, add a lot of dynamic impact to an already special photograph.