Someone once told me that Film Simulation Recipes transformed their photography simply because they no longer kept their camera in the bag during midday light. With the right Recipe, they could get good results even in the harsh and often ugly light found when the sun is high in the sky. Interestingly, there are some photographers who prefer midday light for some of their work (Kyle McDougall comes to mind, especially his An American Mile series). While the rule of thumb has always been that golden hour is best for photography (and shooting more during golden hour is the quickest way to improve your photographs), that doesn’t mean you can’t create good photographs at other times. You don’t need to put your camera away just because the sun is high.

One underrated benefit of midday light is that it frees you from endlessly chasing “perfect light,” which can quietly become a creative crutch. When the sun is high and unflattering, you have to engage more deeply with the scene in front of you. It forces you to pay attention to timing, layering, and narrative, rather than waiting for golden hour to do the heavy lifting. It encourages a mindset shift from collecting pretty pictures to telling stories. Limitations improve art, and midday light is one of those limitations that, once embraced, can quietly sharpen your photographic vision. Obviously, all of this is a journey. There’s no right or wrong way to do photography, and I’m not saying that you should or must do anything; I’m only offering a little encouragement to those who put their cameras away when the sun is high—good photographs can be made anytime, even in midday light.

The Fuji X Weekly App has a new Category feature for App Patrons that allows you to Filter Recipes by different genres, styles, or situations. For example, you can Filter By Travel. Or Cloudy. Or Landscapes or Street. One Category that I personally appreciate is Americana. When you Filter By Americana you’ll see nearly 80 results. If you Filter By Midday, there are over 100 Recipes. When you Filter By both Americana and Midday, it narrows it down to 28 Recipes. Filtering by Americana, Midday, and the Fujifilm X-E5 narrows the results further to 12. Maybe from there you can easily choose which one or ones you want to program into your camera, or maybe a dozen is still too many to decide. Adding one more Filter option—in this case, Retro—brings it down further to just seven. So if you are after a retro Americana aesthetic that’s good for harsh midday light, the seven Recipes below are excellent options. If it’s still too many, you can add more Filters, such as DR400, which brings it down to four, and Grain, which narrows it to just two. You can be as specific as you’d like, which really helps to refine the results to exactly what you’re looking for.

Find these Film Simulation Recipes and many more on the Fuji X Weekly App! Consider becoming a Patron subscriber to unlock the best App experience and to support Fuji X Weekly.