Shoots leaves

[marlene]

One of my clients frequently gets landscape photos (some slides, but mostly digital these days) that we use in various offset printed publications. A lot of the photos we get were shot on overcast days, so the sky is white (or almost white) and there's not much contrast in the photo. If that's the right term. The photos look sort of muddy.

Someone has provided my client with guidelines for shooting landscape photos. Shoot right after dawn or just before sunset, avoiding the midday sun (when there is "too much contrast").

And -- this is the bit I really don't understand -- try to shoot on moderately overcast days with gray skies. And just crop out the gray sky,

I'm not a pro, but this doesn't make sense to me. All of the photos I get that were shot on overcast days require a lot of Photoshop work to make them usable. The photos that were shot on sunny days always look much better to me, and require less tweaking.

So am I out to lunch? Do professional photographers aim to shoot outdoors on overcast days and avoid sunny days?

mxh