Using sunlight as two lights.
Jan 17, 2026
Two for One Sunlight
When the sun is behind your subject and a reflective object is in front of your subject, the sun can behave like two lights. The sun itself is used as a hair-light and the reflective object is used as the main light illuminating the subject’s face.
If you’re using direct sunlight as a hair-light, you must point your subject’s face directly away from the sun. In other words, the subject must be facing into her own shadow. If any direct sunlight is reaching her face, it’ll overpower the reflected light and be distracting.
It takes a bit of geometry to get this right so that you’re getting a light ratio on your subject. You must consider what type of light style your attempting to create: short, butterfly, fully-illuminated, etc. With this in mind, you’ll know how to turn/tilt your subject in relation to the object.
The principle of angle of incidence is important as you consider how to position the subject in relation to the sun and object.
This can be a magical situation where you're getting a soft light from the sun - because it is reflecting off of a larger surface. The large surface is bigger and more powerful as you get your subject closer to the object. Honestly, when I do this, my subject is often within a few feet of the object. If you move your subject too far away, you'll lose the power of the light.
As always, I like a light ratio. So, this is a matter of turning my subject somewhat away from the illuminated object. 
In the above picture, I was lucky in that there was a hallway right next to a bright wall. I was able to position myself correctly so my subject could be somewhat to the side of the wall - this created a "direction" of light that was coming from her left side. I was able to create a slight ratio using this technique.
Direct sunlight is often considered hard to work with. Using reflected sunlight is a good choice for making the most of direct sunlight. Obviously, this works best when the sun is lower in the sky. It's hard to get a lot of power reflecting off of the wall when the sun is directly overhead.