|
 |
See the Light – Lesson One
By Rick Sammon | Wisdom and Inspiration |
Dec 1, 2006
|
|
The First Step to Getting a Good Exposure
As I stress in my book and photography workshops, seeing the light is one of the major keys to getting a good exposure. If we learn how to see the light – the highlights and shadows in the scene, the contrast and color of a scene, the subject’s and the background’s brightness, and even the movement of light – we will become better photographers by making better exposure decisions. We’ll also know when we need to control the light, using a reflector, a diffuser or a flash. And sometimes, we’ll learn that the light is not right in certain location, we’ll need to move the subject or changing our composition, as was the case when I was setting up this picture of a Native American near Lake Powell, AZ.
What follows here in the following lessons is a collection of my photographs that I use in my workshops to help students see the light.
To digress slightly for a moment . . . have you ever heard the term “tone-deaf” to describe a person who can’t tell the difference between musical tones? Well in photography, we use “value blind” to describe a person who has a hard time seeing the subtle differences between light and dark areas of a scene.
Fortunately, there is hope for the value blind photographer – because we can all learn how to “see the light.”
Dynamic Range
In a discussion about seeing the light, we need to begin with what we see with our eyes vs. what our digital camera records. Our eyes are amazing light seeing devices. We can see a dynamic range of about 11 f-stops, which is why we can see shadow and highlight areas of a scene without the shadows being blocked up and the highlights being washed out. A digital image sensor sees/records only about three f-stops, about the same as slide film. So, when shooting with a digital camera, you should expose the scene as though you are using slide film – paying very careful attention to the highlights in a scene, and being very careful not to overexpose them. That was one of the things I was thinking about when I took this picture of a mother polar bear and her cute cubs. Had the fur or snow been washed out, the picture would have been a “wash out.”
In Photoshop, it’s possible to pull out shadow detail and rescue some overexposed highlights in Photoshop (especially with RAW files. We can even go beyond what we can see when using High Dynamic Range in Photoshop/Camera RAW (which I cover on my rickspixelmagic.com DVDs).
Seeing Differently
Here is an idea that most novice photographers don’t think about, brought to mind in this quote by Norwegian symbolist painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944): "At different moments you see with different eyes. You see differently in the morning than you do in the evening. In addition, how you see is also dependent on your emotional state. Because of this, a motif can be seen in many different ways, and this is what makes art interesting."
I photographed these polar bears early one morning, when my eyes and I were just waking up. The softness of the image, and my emotional state (I was missing my family of three), drew me to the scene, one of many on the tundra. Perhaps the close cropping was a result of the closeness of my family.
So read on and learn about seeing the light, but don’t forget that how you feel also affects your exposures.
Seeing, Recording and Adjusting Light
These three images, from a picture I took I took in a cathedral in Spain, illustrate the aforementioned points about seeing, recording and rescuing the light.
The first image shows how I saw the scene. The second image shows how the camera recorded the scene (because I underexposed the scene so as not to blow out the highlights). The third image shows how I rescued and improved the light (the exposure) in Photoshop.
Soft Light = Easy Exposures
These photographs – a head shot of a Tariano woman in Amazonas, a portrait of an African Eagle Owl in Upstate New York, a close-up of a butterfly in Florida, and an Alaskan seascape – have something in common. Unlike the opening picture for this chapter, which has strong and dramatic shadows, there are no strong highlights or shadows in these pictures. The light is soft, making for a
relatively easy automatic exposure, which I’ll cover in Lesson 5 Automatic Exposure Modes. I like photographing when the light is soft, created by an overcast sky or diffused natural or flash lighting. That said, I also like to use shadows to add a sense of depth to my pictures, which is why I like the opening photograph of the Native American.
Let’s take a look at the different types of lighting and how they affect a photograph.
Front Lighting >>>>
Front lighting is nice for portraits when you want the subject’s face evenly illuminated, as was the case when I photographed my guide in Viet Nam. This is another example of an easy automatic exposure.
<<<< Overcast Lighting
Overcast lighting is perfect for portraits of animals and people – because harsh shadows are eliminated by clouds. The soft light makes for somewhat soft images. Yup! Auto exposure with no exposure compensation once again.
Backlighting >>>>
Backlighting creates dramatic silhouettes, as illustrated by this cowboy’s picture that I took in Oregon. How cool is that! And speaking of backlighting, here’s a photography joke: Someone asks a pro, “What is your day rate?” He replies, “$5,000, but it is $7,500 if I have to shoot into the sun.” The point of the joke is that it’s harder to shoot into the sun than away from it.
<<<< Soft Side Lighting
Soft side lighting makes for a more dramatic picture than those taken on overcast days. Pictures also appear shaper, due to the increased contrast range. In this leopard photograph, you can see every whisker on the animals face. I used a –1 exposure compensation for this automatic exposure.
Strong Side Lighting >>>>
Strong side lighting can be nice, but you need to be careful that the subject’s face is not hidden in a shadow, as is the case with the photograph of a lioness after a kill on an African safari. The harsh light makes this picture an “outtake” in my book (actually on my PowerBook G4). No amount of exposure compensation could save this shot.
<<<< Strong Top Lighting
Strong top lighting is the worst, and I mean the worst, for portraits. Avoid it at all costs – unless you can control the natural light. I photographed this man in Papua New Guinea to illustrate that point. This image is also an “outtake” that cannot be saved. However, a diffuser or a flash, which help us control the light, would have reduced the contrast range in the scene and saved the shot.
Soft Top Lighting
Soft top lighting (left), which illuminated my friend Chandler at Jungle World at the Bronx Zoo in New York, is not as bad as strong top lighting and can easily be fixed. See the example to the right.
Soft top lighting can be corrected by simply asking the subject to look upward. Now that was easy.
Bottom Lighting
Bottom light, also known as Halloween light, casts unflattering shadows onto a subject’s face. In this image, taken near Lake Powell, Arizona, a reflector was held below the subject, bouncing unflattering light from a low angle. This is another lighting effect you should try to avoid, unless you are taking pictures for October 31st.
In addition to learning how to see the light, we also need to learn how to see the brightness intensity of the subject, because that also affects the exposure.
Okay. That wraps up Lesson One on See the Light. Stay tuned for Lessons Two and Three in next issues of Double Exposure.
Rick Sammon has published 27 books, his latest: Rick Sammon’s Idea to Image, Rick Sammon’s Complete Guide to Digital Photography, Rick Sammon’s Travel and Nature Photography and Rick Sammon’s Digital Imaging Workshops. He has produced a DVD for Photoshop Elements users: 3-Minute Digital Makeovers, and four DVDs for Photoshop CS user: Awaken the Artist Within, Close Encounters with Camera Raw and Photoshop CS2 for the Outdoor and Travel Photographer. Rick’s latest DVD is entitled Rick Sammon Live!, which is a set of 10 Quick Time movies generated from Rick’s popular seminars.
Rick teaches dozens of workshops and gives seminars – covering shooting, scanning, saving, enhancing, sharing and printing – each year. He writes for PCPhoto, Outdoor Photographer, Shutterbug and Layers.
See www.ricksammon.com and www.rickspixelmagic.com for more information.
Let us know if you found this article useful, and tell us what kinds of articles you'd like to see in upcoming issues. Send your comments and ideas to the editor.
© Copyright 2010 by PHOTOWORKSHOP.COM
Top of Page
Last Updated: Aug 11th, 2010 - 13:36:44
|
|
|
|
|
Wisdom and Inspiration: Additional Articles
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
