QuietOne
07-19-2010, 12:18 AM
I'm spending my lunch shooting people floating the Boise river. It's been mid-90s F or more lately, so I haven't been interested in moving around a lot. I've found a spot that has a couple of nice, comfortable rocks to sit on. They're in the shade, right next to the water, and I can see through the brush enough to tell when the floaters will get to the clear spot in front of me.
So I'm working on how to deal with the conditions. The sun is high and there are absolutely no clouds these days. These pictures were taken around 3pm. With sunset being about 9:30pm, it's basically midday sun. I'm cutting the glare off the water as much as I can with a CP filter. I can tell the meter is fooled by the strong contrast between the river water and the people and rafts. How badly depends on what people are wearing, whether they've gotten any sun since last summer, what color the rafts are and what they're made of. Good quality rubber helps, shiny plastic is really harsh.
So far spot metering and underexposing has been the biggest help. But glare off the rafts and people's skin and clothing is still an issue. There isn't anything to recover, and especially with legs I have to make sure they aren't front and center in the picture, because they aren't fixable.
I'm thinking that underexposing even more won't help much - the issue is the contrast. So my next experiment will be with allowing a little bit of glare from the water so that the contrast isn't so strong. Any other suggestions?
So I'm working on how to deal with the conditions. The sun is high and there are absolutely no clouds these days. These pictures were taken around 3pm. With sunset being about 9:30pm, it's basically midday sun. I'm cutting the glare off the water as much as I can with a CP filter. I can tell the meter is fooled by the strong contrast between the river water and the people and rafts. How badly depends on what people are wearing, whether they've gotten any sun since last summer, what color the rafts are and what they're made of. Good quality rubber helps, shiny plastic is really harsh.
So far spot metering and underexposing has been the biggest help. But glare off the rafts and people's skin and clothing is still an issue. There isn't anything to recover, and especially with legs I have to make sure they aren't front and center in the picture, because they aren't fixable.
I'm thinking that underexposing even more won't help much - the issue is the contrast. So my next experiment will be with allowing a little bit of glare from the water so that the contrast isn't so strong. Any other suggestions?