Why does the sky come out white in my photos?

This is not a fault and it is not fixable in editing after the fact — a clipped sky contains no information at all. It is the single most useful limit to understand, because once you know where the edge is you start composing around it.

Step by step

1. Understand dynamic range.A sensor records a fixed span between the darkest tone that is not just noise and the brightest that is not pure white. A bright overcast sky can be many times brighter than a shaded hedge below it, and if the whole span will not fit, something is lost at one end.
2. Check whether it is genuinely clipped.Turn on the highlight warning and look. A sky that is merely pale still holds detail and lifts back in editing. A sky that flashes is at maximum value with nothing recorded, and no slider will bring cloud back.
3. Expose for the highlights.Set exposure so the sky is just below clipping, using the histogram. The land will look too dark on the screen, and a RAW file will hold far more shadow detail than the preview suggests.
4. Shoot when the range is smaller.The gap between sky and ground is smallest around dawn and dusk, and on a bright but even overcast day. Midday sun with a blue sky and deep shadows is the widest range you will meet, and it is when people take most of their photographs.
5. Use a graduated neutral density filter.A glass filter, dark at the top and clear at the bottom, that holds the sky back by one to three stops while leaving the land alone. It is the traditional landscape answer and it still works, provided the horizon is roughly straight.
6. Bracket and merge.Take the same frame at several exposures on a tripod and combine them afterwards. This is what your phone does automatically. Done deliberately, with restraint in the merge, it looks like a photograph rather than an HDR poster.
7. Add light to the dark end instead.For a person against a bright sky, a flash or a reflector lifts the subject to meet the sky rather than dragging the sky down. This is how outdoor portraits keep both a blue sky and a lit face.
8. Or compose the sky out.Often the honest answer. Drop the horizon, use the sky as a small strip, or turn around. A white strip along the top of a photograph adds nothing and draws the eye straight out of the frame.

Tips

• A blank white sky in a landscape reads as a mistake. A deliberately small sky, or none at all, reads as a decision.
• Polarising filters deepen a blue sky by cutting haze and reflection. They do nothing for an overcast white one.
• Modern sensors hold roughly two to three stops more recoverable shadow than highlight. Bias your exposure accordingly.

Common mistakes

• Trying to recover a clipped sky in editing — Clipped means every pixel is at maximum value. Pulling the highlight slider down produces flat grey, not cloud. The information was never recorded.
• Merging exposures too aggressively — Compressing a huge range into a normal image with every shadow lifted produces the grey, weightless look people recognise instantly as fake. Merge to keep the sky, then let the shadows stay dark.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask