To a lot of photographers, harsh, straight-on backlight can be a bane to making a picture, or at least an unwelcome difficulty to be worked around—either necessitating a move to change the angle of the shot, or by adding fill flash. A shutterbug's gotta do what a shutterbug's gotta do, I suppose.
When it comes to nature photography, my personal shooting philosophy is to keep things as natural and spontaneous as possible. I'll move around to work a scene or subject, but I'm also prone to try and make my first shots from the original angle, thinking there must have been something worthwhile there which caught my eye in the first place. Artificial light is employed only as a last resort.
Mind you, I'm not saying my way is the only way, or even the best way. Nor that you shouldn't adjust your shooting position, or even pop a flash now and then. Just that I try to minimize being a stage manager or lighting director. I prefer to embrace the conditions at hand and try to find a way to work with what I'm given, recording rather than creating. The creative part, for me, is finding the shot and getting an image that captures the essence of its attraction. Backlight becomes a tool rather than an obstacle…and sometimes the primary impetus for the shot.
The butterfly shot, above, is a good example. As butterfly images go, it isn't much good. You'd never use it to show someone what a common Buckeye Butterfly, Junonia coenia, looked like; it isn't even a "pretty" or "artsy" butterfly image. Nope, what caught my eye, and prompted the photo, was that dastardly backlight itself—strong morning sunshine streaming straight at the butterfly…and through its wings!
I saw this not as "Butterfly the Insect," but "Butterfly as Stained-Glass." Nature's stained glass.
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