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'See the Light'—Lesson Two
By | Wisdom and Inspiration |
Jan 1, 2007
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The First Step to Getting a Good Exposure
Hey, welcome back. I hope you enjoyed Lesson One of "See the Light" in the previous edition of Double Exposure. As I previously mentioned, I emphasize the importance of seeing the light all my books and photography workshops.
Let’s move on to Lesson Two. Here goes!
Here
you see two subjects: a leopard seal, photographed in Antarctica, and a
polar bear, photographed in the sub-Arctic. If you simply set you
camera to an automatic exposure mode, the seal would be lighter and the
polar bear would be rendered darker. That’s because very dark and very
light subjects can fool a camera’s exposure meter (which measures
reflected light) into thinking the scene is darker/lighter than it is,
resulting in an incorrectly exposed picture. The remedy in these
situations is to use your camera’s +/- exposure compensation feature.
With dark subjects, a –1 exposure compensation setting is recommended
as a starting point for a good exposure. With light subjects, a +1
setting is recommended as a starting point for a good exposure. I know
that sounds backward, but it’s true. Note that exposure compensation is
usually necessary when most of the frame is filled with a dark or light
subject.
Warm Light vs. Cool Light
In addition to seeing the brightness level of a subject and the direction of light, we need to see the color of light.
Pictures
taken in the late afternoon and early morning, such as this picture of
a model that I took near Lake Powell, AZ, have warm tones: deep shades
of red, orange and yellow. Pictures taken around midday, such as this
ocean picture look cool, with a blue tint.
Seeing
the color of light can help us make exposure decisions, such as
photographing at or near sunrise and sunset to get pictures with warm
tones, and vice versa. Seeing the color of light can also help us make
white balance decisions, either in camera, in Adobe Photoshop or via
Camera RAW—all of which let us change the color of light by changing
the white balance.
Now we are going to spend some time seeing the light behind the subject, because that affects exposure, too.
Check
out these two pictures, taken with my camera set on the Program mode,
of a man I photographed in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. In the
picture with the white wall background, the man’s face is dark. In the
picture with the yellow/orange background the man’s face is properly
exposed. What happened in the first picture? Well, the camera sees a
white wall the same way it sees a polar bear, resulting in an
underexposed picture when shooting in an automatic mode. So for a good
exposure, I asked the man to pose against a neutral background.
Background Light
Here
we see a red parrot with a bad background and a toucan with nice
background. In the parrot photo, taken with my zoom lens set at 50mm,
the white light coming through the leaves is distracting—because our
eyes usually go to the brightest part of a picture first. In the toucan
shot, I used a 300mm lens and a wide aperture to totally blur the
background and any highlights that may have detracted from the beauty
of the subject.
Our Eyes Can Be Fooled
Sometimes,
even if the background looks properly exposed to our eye, it may be
overexposed in a photograph. Here’s an example.
I photographed
this girl in the Maldives. She was standing in the shade and beautiful
blue water filled the background of the frame. However, because I set
the exposure for her face, using the Spot Meter mode in my camera, the
much brighter background is overexposed in my picture (right).
The quick fix was to make
a picture, rather than simply taking a picture. I asked her to move
just a few feet into a position where the background was much darker
than the water (left).
Reducing Flash Shadows
In
flash photography, we need to pay attention to where and how the light
from the flash is falling on and around a subject. See how the light
from the flash casts a harsh shadow behind the holy man that I
photographed in Nepal.
With a little effort, shadows can be
greatly reduced and even avoided. For the picture of a performer at the
Peking Opera, I balanced the light from the flash to the natural light.
For the picture of the young clown, I bounced the light from the flash
off the ceiling for a diffused light effect.
Watch the Foreground
That’s
right! We also have to pay attention to how the light is falling on
foreground subjects in a scene. Both of these pictures were taken in
Mexico at the site of the annual Monarch butterfly migration. In the
horizontal image, the foreground is overexposed, because that portion
of the tree was in brighter light than the top of the tree was. To the
untrained eye, it may not appear that way. In the vertical shot, the
exposure is even because the tree is evenly illuminated.
Now let’s take a look at seeing another important part of exposure: shadows.
Shadows
add a sense of depth and dimension to a photograph. Without them,
pictures look flat—which is not always a bad thing, as illustrated by
some of the preceding pictures, including one of my all-time favorite
shots, the image of the Tariano woman (Part I). These pictures—taken in
Ponderosa Ranch, Oregon, and Old Havana, Cuba, have strong shadow areas
that add to the interest of the image.
To record strong
shadows without rendering washed-out highlights, you need to set your
exposure for the highlights—the brightest area of the scene— which you
can do with your camera’s exposure lock.
Okay. That does it for Lesson Two on See the Light. Join me next month here in Double Exposure for Lesson Three—the final installment of this three-part article on "See the Light."
You can find Part I here.
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.
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Last Updated: Aug 11th, 2010 - 13:36:44
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