Great landscape photography is about knowing how to adapt when the light is playing hard to get. Here, Muench Workshops pro David Thompson breaks down the practical field decisions required to read unpredictable skies and capture extraordinary images, no matter the weather.
Quick Links: How to Track the Light | Essential Gear & Gore-Tex | Working on Overcast Days
We’ve all seen the shots: epic landscapes lit by a wash of golden light, stormy skies brooding overhead. They’re the kind of photographs that make you want to grab your camera and head straight into the wild.
But those moments rarely arrive on cue. Dramatic light usually goes hand in hand with dramatic weather, and out in the field, you’re always chasing a moving target.
To capture extraordinary images in unpredictable conditions, you have to shift your mindset. “Chasing the light” isn’t just a catchy phrase, it’s a real strategy built on reading the weather, holding your plans lightly, and surrendering to the reality that you are not the one in control.
Reading the Sky: The Mechanics of the Chase
Once you accept that nature is the one calling the shots, what’s left is figuring out how to stay ready for whatever it does next. I let the weather dictate everything — where I go, what I shoot, and how I shoot it.
You cannot impose your own schedule on a weather system. Instead, you have to learn how to watch, and that means combining two different inputs: the data on your forecasting apps and the conditions right in front of your eyes.
Modern forecasting tools are great. They can give you a high-level picture of microclimates, wind direction, and cloud cover trends across an entire region. That data tells you where to position yourself generally for the best light and when any fronts are expected to pass through.
But while forecasting apps can tell you a storm is moving in, they cannot pinpoint the exact moment a pocket of sun will illuminate a specific cliff face at your chosen location.
Being able to read the sky yourself means you can lock in your composition and wait for the light, even if you’re standing in the driving rain.
Tracking the Light
To catch those fleeting windows, keep your eyes on three visual cues:
• Look Upwind, Not at Your Subject: Staring directly at the mountain you want to photograph won’t tell you what’s coming. Look upwind—in the direction the clouds are coming from—and trace their path toward the sun. If you spot a gap or a thin patch in the cloud deck heading toward the sun’s position, you can calculate the wind speed and give yourself five to ten minutes to lock in your composition before that light beam hits your subject.
• Watch Open Water First: If you’re on the coast or shooting near lakes, water surfaces are your best early warning system. Look for bright, glistening patches of light traveling across the water miles away. Tracking how fast that patch moves across the water gives you a real-time countdown for when it will hit your subject.
• Monitor Cloud Ceiling Height: High, fast-moving cloud decks produce dramatic spotlighting when they tear open. Tracking how high the cloud base sits tells you whether you are about to get a razor-sharp beam of light or a broader, diffused glow—allowing you to dial in your settings before the break occurs.
Gear for the Chase
Lets face it, you cannot chase light if you are cold, soaked, and miserable. Your physical comfort directly dictates how long you will stay on location waiting for the sun to break through.
I’ve discovered that standard outerwear will fail in extreme environments. Anything labeled “water-resistant” won’t last long and with wind-driven rain, you’ll be soaked to the skin in twenty minutes. Real Gore-Tex is non-negotiable. It’s the difference between staying focused on your scene and retreating to the vehicle shivering
Microfibre Towels
Protecting your camera gear requires a practical balance between speed and shelter. Skip cumbersome plastic rain covers that slow down your adjustments and trap moisture. Instead, keep your camera stowed in your bag between shots or draped with a dry towel while waiting on location.
Most importantly, ditch the tiny $2 lens wipes and pack towel-sized microfiber cloths. Thoroughly wiping down camera bodies, front elements, and tripod legs the second you step back into the vehicle is essential for preventing salt spray and moisture from destroying gear.
Anchor Your Tripod
Footing is another hurdle when you’re shooting on wet grass and steep coastal slopes. Plenty of photographers swear by metal tripod spikes, although I’m strictly a rubber feet guy. But whether you prefer spikes or rubber, making sure your tripod is fully anchored before a heavy gust hits is critical.
Capturing the Moment: How to Frame the Drama
When that window in the sky opens up, you often have very little time before the clouds close back in. You do not want to be fumbling with gear or second-guessing your composition when the light hits. Have a clear execution strategy ready to deploy the second your subject lights up.
Use your long lenses
The first thing I usually reach for is a telephoto. A wide-angle lens is great for context, but when light is breaking several miles away, a wide-angle captures too much empty sky and cluttered foreground.
Switching to something like a 70–200mm or 100–400mm lens lets you reach out across a fjord or valley, crop out the mess, and compress distant mountain layers into a tight, dramatic frame.
Choose your speed
Shutter speed matters just as much once you’re framed up. High winds and sudden bursts of light turn elements like sea spray, whipping rain, or windswept waterfalls into active foreground subjects, and a standard long exposure flattens all of that energy into a milky blur.
I test shutter speeds intentionally instead — something like 1/800th of a second freezes flying spray suspended mid-air, while dropping down to half a second draws out a wispy, painterly trail that shows the true force of the wind.
Be prepared to ditch the tripod
In gale-force conditions, I’ll often ditch the tripod altogether. Three legs and a ball head can act like a sail, catching the wind and introducing micro-vibrations that blur the shot.
When a light-window is closing fast, I’d rather raise my ISO slightly and shoot handheld — staying fluid enough to react the instant the light shifts, rather than losing those seconds fighting to anchor a tripod that’s fighting me back.
Those fleeting bursts of light create incredible drama when they land. But sometimes the clouds stay locked in, and the sunbeams never arrive. That’s when you have to pivot your strategy completely.
When Conditions Don't Co-operate
The biggest mistake a landscape photographer can make is forcing a location that relies on light you aren’t going to get. If a spot only works when the sun hits the peak, and the forecast is solidly overcast, make the decision to cancel the hike. Your time is far better spent switching to locations and techniques that come alive in soft, diffused light.
I never consider light to be completely “bad” unless the sky is utterly flat with zero texture. Even on heavy overcast days, atmospheric elements like mist, rain shafts, and passing low clouds create separation and depth between mountain layers. So when the grand vista light isn’t happening, you need to pivot your creative vision:
How to Shoot in Overcast Weather
• Use Dark, Moody Monochromes: When the sky stays dark, stop looking for color. I shift my focus entirely to high-contrast tonal processing—using the heavy, dark cloud cover to create dramatic black-and-white images driven by form and shadow rather than sunlight.
• Look for Wet, Glistening Textures: Overcast, rainy conditions act as a soft diffuser that brings out the deep saturation in wet surfaces. When the sun won’t break, chase subtle, diffused light instead. Look for rain-slicked rocks, glistening cliff faces, and dark foreground textures that thrive under soft, flat light.
• Work the Atmospheric Layers: When low clouds drop and cap the mountain peaks, I don’t pack up; I use the low-hanging cloud deck to show the scale and mood of the storm. Frame the mountains to highlight where the clouds tear across the rock faces rather than waiting for the summits to clear.
Flexibility yields better photography every single time. Being willing to abandon a location 20 miles down the road because you spot better light 10 miles away is how you turn a flat day into a portfolio shot.
Case Study: Chasing the Elements in the Faroe Islands
These principles apply wherever weather and light collide. On a recent workshop, they were put to the test like never before, as I guided a group through some of the most challenging conditions I’ve ever photographed in.
The Faroe Islands are an archipelago of 18 rugged islands sticking out of the North Atlantic, interconnected by undersea tunnels and battered by colliding weather systems from the north and the south. Visually, they share Iceland’s treeless landscape of grass, moss, and waterfalls, but their massive, dramatic sea cliffs are like nowhere else I’ve seen.
The local tourist board politely calls the wind an “invigorating breeze,” but in reality, it drives rain, hail, snow, and sunlight through a single afternoon. You literally get four seasons in a day, and chasing the light became a daily adventure.
Working with a local guide who is familiar with how quickly conditions change can be invaluable. We partnered with Faroese native, Raanva Joensen, who is also a photographer. Her deep knowledge of the islands, and strategy of letting the weather dictate our photography, was instrumental in guiding our group to the best locations for the conditions.
On one occasion, we took a ferry across to one of the northern islands to hike up a ridge overlooking some massive sea stacks. The forecast was constantly changing and we had twice postponed visiting the location while waiting for a viable window.
When we finally made it to the ridge, we were hit with driving rain, dappled sunlight, and falling snow all within a span of three hours. Because the wind kept the clouds moving rapidly, the light was constantly disappearing and then reappearing again over the ocean.
In one frame, you can see snow falling through a beam of sunlight, catching the light like glowing dust over the sea stacks.
But by keeping our setups flexible—shooting wide-angle vistas one minute and telephoto crops the next—we captured a diverse gallery of images from that single ridge.
That flexibility paid off again while we were waiting for the ferry. I spotted a beam of light hitting a snow-capped peak above a tiny village, with spindrift blowing off the summit.
I grabbed a long lens, shot the panorama handheld, and had it in the bag before the wind moved the light on. If I’d taken three minutes to set up and anchor a tripod against that wind, the shot would have been gone.
The weather that day was intense, but because we embraced the chaos rather than fighting it, the reward was extraordinary.
Embrace the Unpredictable
You don’t capture extraordinary light by praying for predictable weather. You do it by learning to read the conditions, setting your composition early, and being ready when that cloud break comes.
There is nothing quite like the rush of watching a patch of sunlight travel across the landscape, knowing you predicted it five minutes before it landed.
The chase takes patience and flexibility, but when that light finally breaks and strikes your subject, it’s always worth it.
Ready to experience the magic of the Faroes firsthand? Pack your Gore-Tex, grab your tripod spikes, and join DT for an unforgettable week chasing the light on our 04/27 Faroe Islands Rugged Coast workshop.
