70 — Getting sharper images — common problems

August 5, 2009 By 6 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #70 dis­cusses why some­times our pho­tographs do not appear sharp enough.‚ We touch on sev­eral impor­tant fac­tors that all com­pro­mise image sharp­ness. For new­bies in par­tic­u­lar, we also men­tion the depth of field guide which clearly tells the pho­tog­ra­pher the zone of sharp focus (in feet and inches or cen­time­ters and meters depend­ing on the guide) to expect with a given aper­ture and lens.

Depth of field guide

Depth of field guide

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Portable depth of field guide from B&H
Free depth of field table for most dig­i­tal cameras

August’s‚ “Water”‚ assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

69 — Street photography tips

July 11, 2009 By 12 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #69 dis­cusses street pho­tog­ra­phy; what gear to use, what to shoot, how to shoot, should I ask the subject’s per­mis­sion before I shoot etc. This topic was sug­gested by TJD of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum, so many thanks TJD! One thing I for­got to men­tion dur­ing the pod­cast con­cerns model releases. If you never plan to sell the image, in Canada and the U.S. at least, you prob­a­bly (I’m not a lawyer so this advice is worth what you paid for it as opposed to 2oo bucks an hour) don’t need one. If you plan to sell the images you shoot, then it makes good sense to bring a release form with you.

Street photography by Henri Cartier Bresson

Rue Mouf­fe­tard, Paris and Behind the Gare St. Lazare, Paris by Henri Cartier-Bresson

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Robert Dois­neau

July’s Heat” assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

A Week With A View — a day anyway :)

June 29, 2009 By Leave a Comment

A friend of mine, Chris Penn, sent me an email ask­ing me to par­tic­i­pate in A Week With a View whereby we choose one image a day on Flickr and blog about why we think it’s beau­ti­ful. I’ve got a nutty week ahead so I can only play today, but it ‘s a great idea and I encour­age peo­ple to participate.

The photo I choose is called 0253 By Cia de Foto. Click the image to see it on flickr.

0253

For me, part of what makes an image beau­ti­ful is some type of story or the sug­ges­tion of a story. In this image the light is on but the woman looks star­tled. Did the light go on by itself?‚ Did the dog turn it on? What IS going on here? It’s left up to us but we are def­i­nitely engaged.

Another thing that I find beau­ti­ful (Ok it’s a bit tech­ni­cal but it’s my post :) ) is how our eye is beau­ti­fully guided. We go from light to girl to dog and go back and forth between the lit ele­ments. Our eye does not wan­der because the pho­tog­ra­pher is skill­fully guid­ing us.….and for me, it’s a thing of beauty.

and if you don’t accept that, then the star­tled girl is beautiful.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With:

68 — Creating a photography portfolio

June 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #68 dis­cusses how to to pre­pare a port­fo­lio for clients, agen­cies gal­leries etc. Even though we are in the dig­i­tal age, when it comes to pre­sen­ta­tion, noth­ing beats a beau­ti­fully printed pho­to­graph. This pod­cast shares some tips and tricks on putting together a great portfolio.

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Pre­sent­ing pho­tog­ra­phy to gal­leries — Pod­cast #53
June’s low shoot­ing angle assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: ,

Photography.ca winning member images from May 2009

June 16, 2009 By 2 Comments

For the past few months we have added a new fea­ture on our pho­tog­ra­phy bul­letin board where the Admin on Photography.ca (Me, Marko), chooses 1 photo that he thinks is great and talks about the photo. This month I teetered hard between 2 images and in the end decided that they were both win­ners. Wood Duck by Michaelaw and Navy ‘LST 325′ by z-06-jim were my choices for this month. (check the pre­vi­ous link for the explanation).

We have lots of pho­tographs being sub­mit­ted each month on our forum for cri­tiques, assign­ments or just to show the photo. Choos­ing Michaelaw’s and z-06-jim’s photo as the ‹“win­nersž took many hours of care­ful sift­ing. Given that it took so long to choose, I came across many close con­tenders. Seems like a waste of time just to include 1 photo so Ižd like to include 4 hon­ourable men­tions right here.

If you havenžt joined our forum I would encour­age you to do so. We are an extremely friendly bunch that share and learn daily.

Herežs the win­ning photo by Michaelaw:

Wood Duck by Michaelaw

Herežs the win­ning photo by z-06-jim:

Navy ‘LST 325′ by z-06-jim


Here are the 2 hon­ourable men­tions in no par­tic­u­lar order:

Frog/Toad by Michaelaw

First Action Pics by casil403

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With: ,

67 — Orton Imagery — The Orton Effect — Interview with Michael Orton and Darwin Wiggett

June 3, 2009 By 30 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #67 dis­cusses how to use Orton Imagery (AKA the Orton effect or the Orton Tech­nique) to give your pho­tographs an ethereal/painterly feel. This tech­nique was invented by Michael Orton in the mid 1980’s using 2 pieces of over­ex­posed slide film sand­wiched together. The prin­ci­ples of this tech­nique can also be used in graph­ics pro­grams like Pho­to­shop to achieve a sim­i­lar effect. This pod­cast con­tains 2 inter­views; one with Michael Orton dis­cussing‚ the technique’s his­tory, and one with Dar­win Wiggett,‚ dis­cussing his method for cre­at­ing Orton Imagery using Pho­to­shop and other graph­ics pro­grams. Darwin’s step-by-step is out­lined below and his Pho­to­shop action is also included. Thanks a ton Michael and Darwin!!

Image by Michael Orton - click to enlarge

Orton Imagery by Michael Orton — Click to enlarge

NMP2823 - Non-Orton image by Darwin Wiggett - Click to enlarge

NMP2823 — Non-Orton image by Dar­win Wiggett — Click to enlarge

NMP2823 - Orton image by Darwin Wiggett - Click to enlarge

NMP2823 — Orton image by Dar­win Wiggett — Click to enlarge

NMP9058 - Orton image by Darwin Wiggett - Click to enlarge

NMP9058 — Orton image by Dar­win Wiggett — Click to enlarge

NMP6435 - Orton image by Darwin Wiggett - Click to enlarge

NMP6435 — Orton image by Dar­win Wiggett — Click to enlarge

Here’s how to cre­ate Orton Imagery Using Pho­to­shop. Por­tion reprinted from from Orton Imagery — A …œHow to‚ guide for Pho­tog­ra­phers by Dar­win Wiggett. Thanks to Nature Pho­tog­ra­phers online mag­a­zine for allow­ing me to reprint this.

Dig­i­tal Tech­nique to Cre­ate Orton Images

Here, there are many ways to sim­u­late an Orton slide sand­wich. You can do it the same way as out­lined above for slides over­ex­pos­ing two sep­a­rate images and then in the com­puter stack­ing the images together in soft­ware and blend­ing them. Per­son­ally, I pre­fer to take my exist­ing dig­i­tized pho­tos (either from film scans or dig­i­tal cam­era files) and run­ning them through the process below to see if they work as …œOr­ton Images‚.

Here is the step-by-step recipe for mak­ing Orton images in Photoshop:

  1. Open any image you wish to try the tech­nique on. Make a dupli­cate of the image (Image>Duplicate). Close the orig­i­nal image.
  2. Lighten the image as fol­lows: Image>Apply Image‚¦ then in the dia­log box that comes up change the bend­ing mode to …œScreen‚ and the Opac­ity to 100%. This will give you an appro­pri­ately over­ex­posed image.
  3. Dupli­cate this over­ex­posed image (Image>Duplicate).
  4. Blur this sec­ond image (Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur‚¦ and in the dia­log box use a Radius set­ting of 15 to 50 pix­els ‚” the higher the pixel set­ting the blur­rier the photo and the more ‹“painter­lyž the image‚¦ but you can go too far!). Exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent set­tings, for my tastes and for the size of my dig­i­tal files (50–100 megabytes) a radius of about 25 pix­els works perfect.
  5. Now select the move tool from the Pho­to­shop tool bar (or just press …œv‚ on your key­board for quicker access to the move tool). Hold down the …œshift‚ key and use your mouse to drag and drop the blurry image onto the sharp one (donžt let go of the shift key until after you release the mouse but­ton or the images wonžt be in per­fect alignment).
  6. Bring up the lay­ers palette in Pho­to­shop (F7 is the key­board short­cut). Under the word …œLay­ers‚ in the lay­ers palette will be a menu box of blend­ing modes. Change the blend­ing mode from …œnor­mal‚ to …œmultiply‚.
  7. Now …œflat­tenž the two lay­ers by press­ing …œCTRL+E‚ or by click­ing on the side­ways tri­an­gle in the lay­ers palette to select ‹“flat­ten imagež.

There, you now have an Orton image — if you like your new mas­ter­piece save the file!

Copy­right Dar­win Wiggett and Nature Pho­tog­ra­phers Online Mag­a­zine — All rights reserved.
—————————————————————————————————

Dwayne Oaks from our pho­tog­ra­phy forum also lists the way he uses the Orton effect using NX2 soft­ware. Thanks Dwayne.
1-use mid­tone (lev­els) slider to brighten photo (2.04)
2-select gauss­ian blur, set radius slider to (15.85)px and opac­ity to (100)%
go to blend­ing mode and select (mul­ti­ply)
3-readjust (lev­els) slid­ers if nec­es­sary
4-in the case of my work to get the muted col­ors just turn down
the saturation

Links /resources men­tioned in this pod­cast:
More of Dar­win Wiggett’s work on Timecatcher.com
Pho­tograph­ing Cre­ative Land­scapes: Sim­ple Tools for Artis­tic Images and Enhanced Cre­ativ­ity by Michael Orton
Dances with Light by Dar­win Wiggett
Down­load Darwin’s Orton Action
June’s low shoot­ing angle assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum
See and vote on May 2009’s mem­ber images

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcast Interviews, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , , ,

66 — Becoming a Photography Assistant

May 14, 2009 By 4 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #66 dis­cusses how to become a photographer’s assis­tant and this topic was sug­gested by new bul­letin board mem­ber Ray. Thanks Ray!‚ Becom­ing a pho­tog­ra­phy assis­tant is a great way to learn how pho­tog­ra­phy is done in the ‘real world’ with real world pres­sures. It is a great way to decide if being a pro­fes­sional pho­tog­ra­pher is really what you want to do. This pod­cast sug­gests some good ways to get your foot in the door. If vis­i­tors read­ing this have addi­tional ideas, leav­ing a com­ment would be most appreciated.

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
May’s Nos­tal­gia assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum
See and vote on April 2009’s mem­ber images
Pho­tog­ra­phy jobs (dif­fer­ent USA list­ings — some for pho­tog­ra­phy assistants)

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

Photography.ca winning member images from April 2009

May 13, 2009 By Leave a Comment

For the past few months we have added a new fea­ture on our pho­tog­ra­phy bul­letin board where the Admin on Photography.ca (Me, Marko), chooses 1 photo that he thinks is great and talks about the photo. The pen­guin photo below titled A zoo more by Siejones was my choice for this month. (check the pre­vi­ous link for the explanation).

We have lots of pho­tographs being sub­mit­ted each month on our forum for cri­tiques, assign­ments or just to show the photo. Choos­ing Siejones’s photo as the ‹“win­nerž took many hours of care­ful sift­ing. Given that it took so long to choose, I came across many many many close con­tenders. Seems like a waste of time just to include 1 photo so Ižd like to include 4 hon­ourable men­tions right here.

If you havenžt joined our forum I would encour­age you to do so. We are an extremely friendly bunch that share and learn daily.

Herežs the win­ning photo by Siejones:

A zoo more by Siejones


Here are the 4 hon­ourable men­tions in no par­tic­u­lar order:

A Mallard’s Por­trait by Michaelaw

A Walk On Deck by Lovin

Cloud bank BW by Barefoot

Gui­tarist by AcadieLibre

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With:

65 — Color casts — correcting color casts — Interview with Dominic Fuizzotto

April 21, 2009 By 5 Comments

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #65 fea­tures an inter­view with Mon­treal Wed­ding pho­tog­ra­pher Dominic Fuiz­zotto. In the inter­view we talk about why colour casts hap­pen and how to cor­rect colour casts.‚ When images have a colour cast they usu­ally just don’t look right and it is our job as pho­tog­ra­phers to get rid of bad colour casts.

The image at left has a strong yellow/orange cast. We easily see the cast in the brides dress which is white. The cast is removed in the photo on the right and the brides dress is now white. Image by Dominic Fuizzotto

The image at left has a strong yellow/orange cast. We see the cast in the bride’s dress which is NOT white. The cast is removed in the photo on the right and the bride’s dress is now white. Thanks to Dominic Fuiz­zotto for these examples.

One IMPORTANT thing that I for­got to men­tion in the pod­cast is that on the rare occa­sion you may actu­ally WANT to intro­duce a colour cast into an image as in the photo below. This can be done eas­ily in Pho­to­shop but it can also be done by using gels on lights or by set­ting your camera’s white bal­ance to the wrong set­ting on purpose.

This image has a delib­er­ate green/yellow cast. Most times you don’t want this but some­times like in this shot, it works and adds to the shot.

The colour wheel in photography

The colour wheel in photography


This is the colour wheel that most pho­tog­ra­phers use whether they know it or not.‚ White light is made of red, green and blue light. The com­pli­men­tary or oppo­site colours of red, green and blue are cyan, magenta and yel­low respec­tively. In order to reduce a colour cast, we need to intro­duce its oppo­site into the image.‚ There­fore, if an image has a blue cast we reduce that cast by adding yel­low into the image.

Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
Dominic Fuiz­zotto Pho­tog­ra­phy
April’s por­trait assign­ment on the Photography.ca forum

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to every­one that sent com­ments by email about our last pod­cast. Although ALL com­ments are appre­ci­ated, com­ment­ing directly in this blog is pre­ferred. Thanks as well to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

Photography.ca winning member images from March 09

April 16, 2009 By 2 Comments

For the past few months we have added a new fea­ture on our pho­tog­ra­phy bul­letin board where the Admin on Photography.ca (Me, Marko),‚ chooses 1 photo that he thinks is great and talks about the photo. The Bicy­cle photo below titled Eqi­nox by thier­ry­lau­rent was my choice for this month. (check the pre­vi­ous link for the explanation).

We have lots of pho­tographs being sub­mit­ted each month on our forum for cri­tiques, assign­ments or just to show the photo. Choos­ing thierrylaurent’s photo as the ‹“win­nerž took‚ many hours of care­ful sift­ing. Given that it took so long to choose, I came across many many many close con­tenders. Seems like a waste of time just to include 1 photo so Ižd like to include 2 hon­ourable men­tions right here.

If you havenžt joined our forum I would encour­age you to do so. We are an extremely friendly bunch that share and learn daily.

Herežs the win­ning photo:

equinox
Equinox by thierrylaurent


Here are the 2 hon­ourable mentions


Dead flow­ers sele­nium toned by raiven


Recov­ery by Michaelaw

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries Tagged With:

64 — Finding good photography subjects

April 2, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast #64 talks about how to find good pho­tog­ra­phy sub­jects and was a sug­ges­tion by our pho­tog­ra­phy forum mem­ber F8&Bthere. Some­times we go through peri­ods where it’s dif­fi­cult to get out there and take pho­tos. Often this hap­pens in win­ter time when it’s too cold. Some­times though it hap­pens just because we are blocked. This pod­cast offers up quite a few tips and ideas on find­ing inter­est­ing pho­to­graphic sub­jects for indoor and out­door shoot­ing.‚ Use it as a lax­a­tive to help unblock you. :)


Links men­tioned in this pod­cast:
F8&Bthere’s orig­i­nal sug­ges­tion thread
Addi­tional ideas from 365 pho­tos in 2009 (thanks raiven)

If you are still lurk­ing on our forum,
feel free to join our friendly :) Pho­tog­ra­phy forum

Thanks as always to Benny, justaleecher and realestate­curve who posted a blog com­ment about our last pod­cast and to all the new mem­bers of the bul­letin board.

If you are look­ing at this mate­r­ial on any other site except Photography.ca — Please hop on over to the Photography.ca blog and pod­cast and get this and other pho­tog­ra­phy info directly from the source. I Sub­scribe with iTunes I Sub­scribe via RSS feed I Sub­scribe with Google Reader I Sub­scribe for free to the Pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast — Photography.ca and get all the posts/podcasts by Email
You can down­load this pho­tog­ra­phy pod­cast directly by click­ing the pre­ced­ing link or lis­ten to it almost imme­di­ately with the embed­ded player below.

Pod­cast: Play in new win­dow | Down­load

Filed Under: Photography podcasts, Photography tips, podcasting Tagged With: , ,

Why is the snow grey? What happened?

March 23, 2009 By 2 Comments

Thanks to casil403 of our pho­tog­ra­phy forum for the use of these pics. So what hap­pened here? Why is the snow grey when every­one knows that snow is white.

Basic expo­sure is a com­mon area of con­fu­sion for new­com­ers in pho­tog­ra­phy and these pho­tos are PERFECT teach­ing tools.So what hap­pened here? Why is the snow grey(ish) — after all, the pho­tog­ra­pher used a cam­era meter right?

Grey snow

Grey snow

Here is why this shot did not come out. This is text­book basic expo­sure and you NEED to under­stand this if you want the fog to lift and move up a level with your pho­tog­ra­phy.‚ Here goes:

All a cam­era is, is hole with a flap over it. When the flap is lifted light hits film or a sen­sor. On mod­ern cam­eras, depend­ing on the set­ting you use, the camera’s meter sug­gests an expo­sure. This sug­ges­tion is good one in the fol­low­ing con­di­tion;

– When there is a good rep­re­sen­ta­tion of light and dark tones. This is called a nor­mal scene.

AT THIS POINT WE MUST SAY THAT THE CAMERA IS BLIND. IT DOES NOT KNOW WHAT IT IS LOOKING AT BECAUSE IT HAS NO BRAIN. ALL IT DOES IS AVERAGE OUT THE TONES IT SEES AND SPITS OUT AN EXPOSURE. ALTHOUGH THIS IS NOT INTUITIVE (FOR COLOUR PHOTOGRAPHY) THE COLOUR MID-GREY IS THAT MIDDLE TONE THAT THE CAMERA USES AS THE AVERAGE.

Since these shots above have a pre­pon­der­ance of white highly reflec­tive snow and NOT enough other tones to bal­ance out the scene, This is NOT a nor­mal scene. The camera’s meter there­fore, will NOT be accu­rate in cases like this (even if your cam­era costs 3,000‚ or 10,000 dol­lars) and if you use the camera’s meter read­ing in this case you will NEVER EVER get white snow. You have to make adjust­ments to the meter’s read­ing. This is why a mon­key can take a pic­ture, but not a good picture.

In this case, what the cam­era is doing is say­ing “Holy crap bat­man, look at all that white snow, it’s so bright; I bet­ter CUT the expo­sure to bal­ance out the scene”. That’s what the meter does here — It tells the cam­era to cut the expo­sure and so it is too dark. To rem­edy this you need to give the scene MORE light by increas­ing the expo­sure by 1 to 2 stops.

The exact oppo­site is true as well. Let’s say you have a white dog on black pave­ment or just a shot of black pave­ment. In that case the camera’s meter will say “Holy crap bat­man, look at all that black pave­ment , it’s so dark; I bet­ter INCREASE the expo­sure to bal­ance out the scene”. And in that case as well, the black pave­ment will look grey because the meter is try­ing to aver­age out the tones in the scene toward mid-grey. To rem­edy this you need to give the scene LESS light by decreas­ing the expo­sure by 1 to 2 stops.

I hope that made sense. You can fol­low the whole thread (topic) here on our pho­tog­ra­phy forum and read the advice of dif­fer­ent mem­bers. If you still have ques­tions, join for free and post in that thread (or start a new one). It’s our plea­sure to help.

Filed Under: Photographs, Photography blog entries, Photography tips Tagged With: , , ,
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