exposure photo workshop

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What Is Exposure and Why Does It Matter?

Recognizing a Good Exposure

Taking Charge of Your Exposures

Driving a Lean, Clean Shooting Machine

The Myth of the Correct Exposure

Exposure and Mood

Artful Exposure and the Commercial Lab

Monitor Calibration


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WHAT IS EXPOSURE AND WHY DOES IT MATTER?

Although most photographs are made in expo-sures that last just fractions of a second, that brief instant is not so much a spontaneous event as it is the culmination of a long (hopefully not too long or you’ll miss the shot) thought process on the part of the photographer — you. The process begins when you spot a potential subject, contin-ues as you decide how to approach the subject (where to stand, what lens to use, whether the lighting is interesting enough), and ends the instant you press the shutter release button.

A lot of important questions — both technical and aesthetic — have to be (or at least, should be) addressed before you give your trigger finger permission to commit to your idea. And one of the most important issues that you have to con-tend with is setting the exposure. In terms of the success or failure of a particular image, probably no question you confront is as important as this one: How should I expose this scene?

You can choose the most brilliant subject, find the most startling and creative angle, and luck into a splendid lighting situation, but if you expose it poorly, you’ve tripped just before reach-ing the finish line. Ouch.

Good exposure in a photograph is one of those creative experiences where the result is often far greater than the total of the steps used to get there. If you’ve ever seen a potter at work, throw-ing globs of wet clay onto a spinning potter’s wheel and shaping an object with an assortment of sticks, bits of wire, and dabs with a wet cloth, you’ve seen this idea in action. As the piece pro-gresses, out of these mundane ingredients and almost childlike methods, gradually a soft, graceful shape emerges and transforms mere clay into an inspired work. The potter has a vision and is able to extract that vision from the materials at hand.

So too do great photographic exposures arise from the most basic tools and techniques. Yes, a good exposure is the product of routine technical choices such as metering correctly, choosing the right lens aperture and shutter speed, and setting the optimum white balance. But when these ordi-nary steps are combined in a purposeful way by a skilled craftsperson, exposure rises above the level of simple “correctness” and something fascinating happens: Exposure itself becomes a creative ele-ment in the photograph. Thoughtfully considered and well-executed exposure choices can trans-form an ordinary subject into an extraordinary photograph.

Mastering creative exposure is about developing your ability to see your subject in terms of a fin-ished image and to extract your vision from the world around you (see 1-1). And the key to doing that, of course, is to first understand exactly what exposure is — and what it takes to turn a good exposure into an inspired one.

Another question you may ask your-

self is, “Isn’t getting good exposure

the reason I bought an expensive camera in the first

place?” I address that in Chapter 2, but buying a nice

camera was a good decision.

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EXPOSURE PHOTO WORKSHOP / The Art of the Exposure

the truth is that exposure — at least in its most basic concept — is pretty simple to define. A good or “correct” (and I have a lot more to say about that word in the coming pages) exposure is one that captures the overall tonal range (the range of dark through light tones) that your sub-ject had in person. That’s it. You’re trying to cap-ture an image that shows the dark tones, the light tones, and all the tones in between pretty much as they looked to you in person (see 1-2). Or, at least, the way that you thought they looked.

If photography is a new hobby for you, one of the first questions you may ask is, “Exactly what is expo-sure and why is it so important?” Okay, granted, that’s two questions, but they’re both essentially ask-ing the same thing. There are both simple and com-plex answers to this question, but I begin with the simple ones (don’t worry; the more complex ones are far friendlier than you might think).

Although this entire book is devoted to exposure and the very mention of the topic seems to instigate a lot of passionate debate among photographers,

1-1

ABOUT THIS PHOTO A young boy races his scooter past a colorful wall in Mexico. Understanding exposure helps you

bring your creative vision to your photographs. Shot at ISO 560, f/3.0, 1/5 sec. with a 70-300mm Sigma lens. ©Derek Doeffinger.


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seem washed out and lack detail in the brightest or highlight regions. In the comparison shots of a giant saguaro cactus shown in 1-3, 1-4, and 1-5, for example, you can see how changes in exposure change the tonal range of the subject.

Your exposure goal then is simple: you want to capture an image that is neither too dark nor too bright, but just right.

RECOGNIZING A GOOD EXPOSURE

When you create a good exposure, it means that you’ve provided your camera’s sensor with just the right amount of light (or exposure) to record your subject’s tones correctly. And like the old adage of not knowing what great art is but “know-ing it when you see it,” good exposures tend to resonate with quality — even if you’re not sure what’s creating that feeling. If you give the sensor too little light, you underexpose the scene and your subject appears darker than you remember it (or wanted it); subjects that would otherwise be bright, clean, and white appear gray and dingy. If you give the sensor too much light, you overex-pose the scene, and all the tones in the pictures

1-2

ABOUT THIS PHOTO In setting the exposure for the historic Lightship Overfalls shot in Lewes,

Delaware, I wanted to retain detail in a broad area of tonal regions, from the bright sunlit white areas

to the darker shadows. Shot at ISO 200, f/10, 1/400 sec. on a tripod with an 18-70mm Nikkor lens.

Photographing anything that is bright

white — snow, paint, a swan — is

tricky because it has a tendency to come out gray rather

than white if you don’t make the right metering and

exposure adjustments. There are some simple tricks to

photographing pure-white subjects, like snow, and I

discuss these and other problem-exposure subjects in

Chapter 8.

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How difficult it is to get that perfect balance of tones depends largely on tonalities of your sub-ject. When a scene is filled with relatively aver-age tonalities and the lighting is gentle and even, getting a good exposure is a fairly simple process. Your camera’s automatic exposure system does a very good job of correctly recording the scene’s tonal range. I photographed the garden steps shown in 1-6 at a formal garden in New York and I shot at the metered exposure. I trusted the metering system to do a good job with this simple scene because all the tones were relatively even and there was nothing overly dark or light. It was a point-and-shoot photograph. Similarly, while the colorful carnival ride scene in 1-7 has a mix of colors and tones, none of them dominates the others and so a good, average exposure handles the scene quite well.

1-3

1-4

1-5

ABOUT THESE PHOTOS This series of photos shows how

exposure affects the tonalities of a scene. In 1-3, the sensor received too

much light, and therefore the tones and colors seem washed out and

pale. In 1-4, the exposure was correct, so the tonalities appear much as

they did to me in person. And in 1-5, the shot received too little light, so

the image seems muddy and far too dark. All three taken at ISO 200 and

exposed for 1/100 sec. at f/8.0, 1/250 sec. at f/8.0, and 1/1000 sec. at f/8.0,

respectively, on a tripod with a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom lens.

When the competition between dark

and light tones goes beyond the abil-

ity of your camera’s sensor to record, a specialized

technique called HDRI (high dynamic range imaging)

can help bring extreme contrast under control. I explain

the technique in Chapter 8.

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Metering is an important aspect of

exposure, of course, and I devote

Chapter 3 to the subject.

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ABOUT THIS PHOTO I photographed these garden steps at the lovely Caramoor

Gardens in Katonah, New York. Because the gray concrete was evenly lit, I was able to expose

at the metered reading of ISO 200, f/14, 1/13 sec. on a tripod with an 18-70mm Nikkor lens.

1-6

1-7

ABOUT THIS PHOTO Bright colors always attract my eye. I shot this

carnival ride on a slightly overcast late afternoon and the even lighting allowed

me to shoot at the metered reading of ISO 400, f/4.5, 1/80 sec. handheld.


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Contrast is one of the more vexing exposure problems and often it takes some practice and experience to learn to handle it well. For exam-ple, in the shot of red rocks in Sedona, Arizona, shown in 1-8, I was confronted by a very dark foreground contrasting with an extremely bright background. I had to decide how to handle the scene because I knew from experience in similar situations that the meter would be fooled by the contrast. Conversely, photographing an oyster

The more complex your subject is in terms of tonalities, however — with a lot of competing bright and dark tones, a severe imbalance of tones, or even a lack of tonal variations — the more challenging the job becomes. That’s exactly where your personal knowledge and experience come into play. You need to know how your camera’s light meter will react to all that pretty snow — and what steps you need to take to help it record the snow correctly.

1-8

ABOUT THIS PHOTO Contrast is a common problem in outdoor scenes. In this shot, I elected to set the exposure for the rock formation and let

the foreground shadows go black while preserving detail in the brighter areas. Shot at ISO 100, f/4.5, 1/370 sec. on a tripod with a 20mm Nikkor lens.


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a matter of a few weeks. I’m always surprised at how quickly their technique improves. It will happen for you, too. Things such as excessive contrast (1-10) and shadowy faces are traps that you’ll recognize before you take a shot, and you’ll have the technical tools in your arsenal to deal with them. The better your exposures are, the more powerful and successful all your other cre-ative decisions become.

boat in fog on the Housatonic River near my home in Connecticut provided a scene almost totally devoid of contrast (see 1-9).

Getting a good exposure in tricky conditions may seem like an overwhelming challenge when you’re first getting used to your camera, but it will become second nature very quickly. I’ve seen stu-dents who didn’t know a blown-out highlight from a lens cap at the start of one of my adult-education classes master the basics of exposure in

ABOUT THIS PHOTO Fog is the great thief of contrast, and the brightness of fog can fool a camera’s light meter into thinking

there’s more light available than actually exists. Shot at ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/40 sec. on a tripod with a 70-300mm Nikkor zoom lens.

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in our basement and I spent most of my high school years living the life of a troglodyte. I learned how to fix almost every exposure mistake imaginable until I had a moment of clarity (it took a while to experience that clarity, trust me), and I decided that it was far simpler to learn to make good exposures in the first place than to spend all of my waking hours (and most of my allowance) making good prints from bad exposures.

Even though digital-imaging software is fun to use and is capable of making all the fixes that I made in the darkroom (and a thousand times more), it’s far better for you to take charge of your exposures before they’re even made. Fortunately, digital cameras include features that help you do just that, as well as view and correct mistakes immedi-ately after exposure. Here are some tips on how to use your digital camera to take control of the exposure process:

■ Study your camera’s light-metering features. The light meter that is built into your digital camera is remarkably accurate most of the time, even in difficult or complicated situa-tions. In the shot of Maine’s Nubble Light (1-11), for example, I relied on my zoom cam-era’s meter and it provided a great exposure in a tough situation. Using a light meter effec-tively, however, requires a good bit of knowl-edge about how it works and when it needs some guidance from you. In Chapter 3, I take an in-depth look at how your light meter works and the theory behind light measure-ment. For now, take time to study your man-ual and review your camera’s metering choices so that as you read Chapter 3, you can relate it to your camera.

TAKING CHARGE OF YOUR EXPOSURES

In the days before digital cameras and image-edit-ing software (when dinosaurs still roamed the earth, as one of my friends put it), you either lived with the exposure mistakes you made, or you paid a lab to fix them for you. In my case, my father (also a photographer) built me a darkroom

ABOUT THIS PHOTO Once you’re aware of it,

you’ll quickly learn to spot contrasty scenes like this old

weather vane photographed in Maine. Taken at ISO 200,

f/6.3, 1/640 sec. on a tripod with a 200mm Nikkor lens.

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■ Learn to interpret your histogram. Most advanced digital cameras offer a histogram that displays a graphic representation of the tonal range of your exposures, which is an extremely useful tool once you learn how to interpret the information. Learning to read a histogram isn’t difficult, but it is foreign to most nonphotographers. The sooner you become familiar with what it looks like and what its content means, the less abstract it will seem to you. At the very least, for now, learn where the control is to turn your histo-gram on and off.

■ Review your exposures on your LCD panel. Professional photographers used to use Polaroid films to test exposures and only com-mitted the shot to film once they were satis-fied that the exposure was perfect. It was a slow and expensive way to test a shot, but much less expensive in terms of time and money than wasting actual film. With digital, the LCD panel on your camera provides you with the same ability to preview your expo-sures immediately. The LCD isn’t foolproof for a laundry list of technical reasons (includ-ing contrast issues), but it does provide you with a fairly decent advance look at your pho-tos. Once you’re experienced enough to know how to correct any flaws you see in the pre-view, you can reshoot and correct exposure mistakes on the spot.

1-11

ABOUT THIS PHOTO The relatively high contrast between the dark foreground and bright lighthouse didn’t

fool the meter of my zoom camera. Taken at ISO 100, f/5.9, 1/90 sec. on a tripod with a 116mm Nikkor zoom lens.

I discuss the advantages — and the

limitations — of the histogram in

Chapter 8.

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learning how to fix bad ones in editing. Just as I learned the value of making better in-cam-era exposures by processing my own film and prints, your editing program can quickly teach you how to adjust your shooting methods to create better image files.

■ Understand that technically correct isn’t always the best exposure for the shot you’re trying to take. Even if every exposure you ever made was technically correct (again, meaning if the tonalities were recorded accu-rately), what are the chances that your cam-era would make the best aesthetic exposure choices? In 1-13, for example, I intentionally based my exposure on the brighter areas (the doorway) and let the interior of the barn I was standing in go black to create a more dramatic look. As you learn in the coming chapters, there is a vast gulf between creating a techni-cally correct exposure and an inspired one. When it comes to photographing a sunset at

■ Get to know an image-editing program. If you’re not already using an image-editing pro-gram, it’s probably a good thing to learn con-currently with learning to use your digital camera. With some basic skills in editing, you can quickly remedy those (rare) exposure mis-takes that you make with the camera, or sim-ply enhance the good qualities of your exposures (converting images to black and white, for example — see 1-12). There’s no point in hiding that image-editing software is pretty much a photographic wizard when it comes not only to tweaking photographic exposure, but to unveiling a whole new uni-verse of creative possibilities, as well. I’m an absolute Photoshop addict, and when I’m not shooting pictures, you can almost always find me staring at my monitor, working to enhance files either technically or creatively. As I said earlier, however, I think it’s far more important to spend your time learning to make good exposures in the camera than

1-12ABOUT THIS PHOTO

I converted this shot of a

seagull to black and white —

one of thousands of interest-

ing effects available in

Photoshop. Taken at ISO 200,

f/5.6, 1/1600 sec. handheld

with a 70-300mm Nikkor

zoom lens.


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■ Study the work of the masters. In photogra-phy, as in any art or craft, it’s important to seek out and study the work of the masters — those people whose life’s work has elevated the craft to a higher level, both technically and aesthetically. After all, if you’re going to imitate anyone, it may as well be someone who has already confronted and conquered the demons that are frustrating you. Studying the work of notable photographers, both

the beach, for example, you can expose to keep the colors in the sky bright and cheerful, or radically underexpose the image to create a more saturated and dramatic look. Your cam-era could never make that distinction (at least not without help from you) because it has no idea what your intentions are or what you’re photographing. That is why your camera always needs you to guide it in your quest for creative exposure perfection.

■ Wean yourself off the automatic scene modes. There are numerous exposure modes, called scene modes on most cameras, which act as shortcuts for getting good exposures with subjects such as landscapes, sports, and night photos. While these modes can be useful when you’re first learning to shoot a variety of challenging subjects, you still have to learn what the camera is doing behind the scenes when you’re in those modes. There are better methods for controlling the exposure in virtu-ally any of these situations, and the sooner you learn to use them, the more in control you will be.

Turning your picture-taking decisions over to automation is like getting into woodworking and then buying a computer-driven lathe to turn the wood for you. Where is the artistic challenge and the fun of exploration? As pre-cise as that lathe might be, it’s going to give you the exact same predictable results every time you use it. (And what are you going to do with all those identical candlesticks?)

Subject-specific exposure modes are

found on many cameras and they

can provide a shortcut to good exposures, provided

you match the right mode to the right subject. In

Chapter 6, I discuss some of the most common modes,

when it’s safe to use them, and when you’re better off

making your own decisions about exposure.

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ABOUT THIS PHOTO By intentionally metering and

exposing for only the bright areas here, I was able to intensify

the drama of this simple barn interior. Taken at ISO 200, f/4.5,

1/80 sec. handheld with a 12-24mm Nikkor zoom.

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own part-time portrait business while she was still taking classes. I could see in our class that she was applying the concepts she was learning and using her daughters as practice subjects almost daily.

It’s up to you to take charge of your exposures and all your digital camera’s controls so that you can use your camera as what it is meant to be: a tool. Think about all the wonderful photographs that were made a hundred or more years ago and that have survived to inspire us today.

legendary and contemporary, has (at least) two specific benefits in terms of mastering exposure: For one, you see how they approached ordinary situations and made them appear extraordinary and also, how they solved the riddle of more complex challenges. Studying the work of master photographers also helps you develop a sense of what really great photographs look like — and why they are so highly regarded.

Probably the best way to study photography is to go see it in person. In major cities it’s fun to find “gallery row” and just wander in and out of private galleries and get familiar with the work of some of the up-and-coming practitio-ners. A lot of major museums and galleries around the country regularly showcase photog-raphy and it’s worth getting on their exhibi-tion mailing list. Some museum galleries, like the wonderful Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona at Tucson (Ansel Adams was among the found-ers), even schedule private viewings of original prints. I’ve sat in their viewing room with a stack of photos by Ansel Adams and Edward Steichen and it’s quite a thrilling experience. As great as books are, nothing teaches you more about what a great photograph looks like than staring one square in the face. But fair warning, it can be a very humbling experience.

■ Be patient — experience eventually pays off. Digital cameras can’t accumulate experience the way that your brain does (yet). With each photograph that you take, you are gaining experience that will translate into better and more ambitious images. You are developing both technical and visual skills and learning how to finesse ordinary situations into great pictures. The charming portrait in 1-14 was taken by Jennica Reis, a former student of mine who went from hobbyist to running her

ABOUT THIS PHOTO Learning to make gentle portraits

like this is all about applying some basic exposure concepts to a

subject that really touches you. Taken at ISO 200, f/1.8, 1/250

sec. with a 50mm Canon lens. ©Jennica Reis.

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films. So just spin a dial, push a button, and there you go — greener-than-Iowa greens. But regard-less of their names, all these features are designed to manipulate one or more of five basic image qualities: contrast, color tone, color saturation, brightness, and sharpness. And you can adjust the intensity of each of those changes individually (if you have time after spending a week with that section of the camera manual).

Understanding what each of these features does is usually pretty straightforward: The Neutral Picture Style, for example, usually creates images that closely match the scene as you see it. Conversely the Vivid setting intensifies color sat-uration and sharpness. Subject-specific styles per-form a laundry list of tasks: In the Landscape mode, for example, not only does the camera enhance saturation, contrast, and sharpening, but it specifically exaggerates blues (sky) and greens (foliage). The Portrait mode boosts contrast, soft-ens focus, and adds warmth. If they add a Seascape mode, it will probably spray you with salt mist.

Those pioneering photographers didn’t even have film (let alone Wi-Fi enabled phones that trans-mit images across the room at the speed of light), and yet their photos created a new visual medium that forever changed the world. And now you are the pioneer of a new medium. Be humble (or at least pretend to be).

DRIVING A LEAN, CLEAN SHOOTING MACHINE

When I was growing up in the 1960s one of the mandatory things you had to do to your car (if you were among the chosen few to own a car) was to put flame decals along the back and front fenders. Anyone who knew anything about cars knew that if it had flames painted on it, it went faster — much faster. Camera companies seem to borrow that philosophy and are always looking for ways to add flames to what I think is already a pretty cool ride — your basic digital camera.

One of the growing trends in digital cameras is the abundance of style modes. These are sophisti-cated types of in-camera processing features that are designed to give your images a more, well, stylish look, without having to resort to a lot of fancy after-the-fact editing tricks. Different cam-era companies give them different names (Nikon calls them Picture Controls and Canon has Picture Styles), but they are all aimed at doing the same thing: matching the camera’s response to a certain type of subject while simultaneously jazzing up your photos.

Some of these controls are more generically named and purposed (Neutral, Standard, Vivid, or Monochrome, for example) and some are paired more specifically to certain types of sub-jects such as portraits, landscapes, or even sun-sets. A few creative style settings (the Fujifilm Film Simulation modes, for example) are even aimed at re-creating the look of certain types of

Picture Style or Picture Control

options should not be confused with

subject-specific exposure modes.

note

The problem with style modes is that they auto-mate some very significant parts of the exposure process, taking the steering wheel away from the one person who’s supposed to be driving this thing: you, the photographer. Now, if you don’t do your own editing, style modes can go a long way toward adding impact and drama to your photos. But if you do your own editing, these fea-tures only get in your way. Keep in mind that these features only work in the JPEG format and not in the RAW format, so if you are shooting in RAW you see the enhanced image on the LCD, but those changes do not carry over to your RAW


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The great master photographer Ansel Adams, who probably did more to advance both the art and science of exposure than any other photogra-pher, used the term visualization to describe the process of consciously trying to imagine the final picture before you make the exposure. In his

are no mistakes in art, only personal choices and new opportunities. She was being kind, I know, but I got the point anyway.

VISUALIZING THE EXPOSURE YOU WANT

You’re probably starting to become aware that the gist of what I’m saying so far is that exposure is a very subjective aspect of photography. Like choosing a subject or composing a scene, no two people see exposure the same way. The exposure that you think is correct for a particular subject and the exposure that someone else thinks is cor-rect could be (not always, but often) entirely dif-ferent — and yet each of you might be very happy with your results. The key to getting the exposure that satisfies you the most is imagining what you want the picture to look like before you even begin to meter the subject (see 1-15 and 1-16). In the shot of New Hampshire’s famed stone profile of the Old Man of the Mountain (see 1-17), I turned his classic profile into a sil-houette by exposing for the sky. Sad to say, the Old Man crumbled to the valley floor during a hard winter — after 12,000 years of looking down on New Hampshire.

files. In other words, the LCD provides a very misleading rendering (the LCD gets its image from a JPEG image, so it does show the style effects) — not good. Once you open the image in RAW you have to slam the buggy in reverse and start all over again anyway. A waste of time and fuel.

Does that mean you should ignore these features completely? No. I love experimenting with them. Even so, there is nothing that they do that I (or you) can’t do better in editing. There will be times (eventually) when you are extremely familiar with your camera and its response to certain subjects and you can use them as they were meant to be: a fast lane to a specific look. If you’re shooting a portrait, for example, you might say, “Gee, I’d love this shot to be a bit warmer and have a softer focus,” and so the Portrait style mode will be handy. But while you’re mastering the art of exposure, do your best to avoid relying on them and, if possible, shut them off completely.

What you’re after is building your own custom ride — and to do that you have to start with a clean machine.

THE MYTH OF THE CORRECT EXPOSURE

Although throughout this book I may use the terms “good” or “bad” to describe the success or failure of a particular exposure, one of the myths that I hope to dispel early on is that there is only one correct exposure for any given scene or sub-ject. To use a terrible photographic pun, there is nothing black and white about good exposure — at least not when it comes to seriously creative picture taking. As my high school art teacher used to tell me years ago (every time I would become frustrated with a new assignment), there

Contrast is one of the most vexing

problems that all photographers

face, but there are a lot of simple solutions. In Chapter

8, I show you several simple methods for dealing with

excessive contrast.

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walls and tried to imagine what the finished room was going to look like in a different color, you’ve already done some visualizing (or previsualizing, as a lot of photographers refer to it). In fact, every time you look through your closet in the morning and decide that your green shirt goes just per-fectly with your purple shoes, you’re previsualiz-ing what your appearance will be once you’re dressed (those do go together, don’t they?).

landmark book, The Negative, Adams writes, “Visualization is a conscious process of projecting the final photographic image in the mind before taking the first steps in actually photographing the subject.”

The goal of visualizing is, of course, to know where you’re trying to get creatively so that you can take the right technical bus to get you there. If you’ve ever sat in a room that you were think-ing about repainting and just stared at the blank

ABOUT THESE PHOTOS Sunsets offer a great example of how a slight shift in exposure can radically alter the final

results. In 1-15, I wanted to see how this Florida scene would look with more saturated colors, so I underexposed from a meter

reading of the sky (I metered the sky just to the left of the sun) by two stops. Shot at ISO 200, f/18, 1/60 sec. on a tripod using a

105mm Nikkor lens. 1-16 was shot only seconds later, and I shot at the actual metered exposure of ISO 200, f/18, 1/15 sec.

1-15 1-16


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found it a terribly painful process, especially if I’ve traveled thousands of miles to take the pic-tures, but it helps me improve my photography.

One of the inherent problems that all photogra-phers face (and even the masters of the medium grapple with this issue) is that the scene that you see in your imagination and the image that the camera sees are two radically different things — for quite a number of reasons. For one, when you are standing in front of a pretty landscape, all of your senses are taking in the scene. As you walk through a rural landscape (see 1-18), you are awash in a symphony of sensory overload: You’re hearing the wind rustle through the corn fields, you’re smelling the fresh-mown hay in the nearby fields, you’re hearing the bellowing cows as they wait to be fed, and you’re feeling the warm morn-ing sun on your skin (wow, sounds like a great place!). All these things profoundly affect the beauty and intensity of the scene for you.

HUMAN VISION VERSUS CAMERA VISION

For some people, the concept of visualization comes naturally, but for most, it takes quite a bit of conscious practice. I don’t think it’s an inher-ent skill for anyone, though, so don’t be frustrated if your photos don’t automatically mirror the images in your head. Even Adams thought it was an acquired skill that photographers — including himself — had to learn.

The more photographs that you shoot and the more often you fail (and succeed), the better you become at knowing your subjects and getting that great shot. Of course, not getting the picture only works as a learning tool if you take the time to analyze exactly where you went wrong. For that reason, it’s very important that you take the time to study the exposures that you think failed and try to figure out what went wrong. I’ve always

ABOUT THIS PHOTO

How you expose a scene is

entirely up to you. I decided

that it was the power of the

legendary profile that I was

after, so I exposed for the sky

to create this silhouette. Shot

at ISO 100, f/16, 1/125 sec. on

a tripod using a 300mm

Nikkor lens.

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that your eyes see, you have to make a conscious effort to decide how you want those tones and colors recorded, and you have to know the limits of your camera’s capabilities. You also have to accept the cold, cruel realization that in many scenes, particularly in high-contrast scenes, deci-sions have to be made and often certain aspects of a scene have to be sacrificed. The goal, of course, is not to throw the baby out with the bathwater. I photographed the rose (1-19) in my garden sit-ting in a pool of bright sun and in front of a deep shadow area. Had I given any consideration to “opening up” the shadow area, I might have washed out the rose by giving it too much expo-sure. Instead, I simply took my reading from the rose using my center-weighted meter and let the shadow area go completely black.

By comparison, your camera isn’t having nearly as much fun. Tragically, the sounds, the scents, and the warm sun are completely lost on that expen-sive bit of technology. Also, while your eyes and brain are capable of admiring and absorbing a vast and subtle range of highlights, shadows, and colors, your camera is somewhat handicapped. No digital sensor can record in a single frame all the tones or gradations of color that you can see, because the contrast range that your eyes and brain see and the contrast range that the camera is able to record are extremely different. As amazing as your camera’s sensor is at recording detail in both dark and light areas, your brain can see an enormously broader realm of textures and tonalities.

Therein lies the rub and that is exactly where the power of visualization comes into play. Because your camera can’t record every tone and color

1-18

ABOUT THIS PHOTO I like to drive the back roads looking for farm scenes to photograph, like this

one in Iowa. However, you have to divorce yourself from the sensory overload and concentrate on the sub-

ject, the light, and the exposure. Taken at ISO 200, f/9.0, 1/250 sec. on a tripod with an 18-70mm Nikkor lens.


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what your mind’s eye saw and wanted to record. I’ve even gone so far as to note that “hands were quivering from cold, had to use self-timer to avoid shaking camera — bring gloves next time” while shooting winter scenes in an old cemetery. Let’s face it, most of us never looked twice at our high school geometry notes, but in the act of taking them we paid far more attention to what was being taught — even if we looked kind of nerdy doing it.

■ Try to picture the finished photograph in a frame hanging in your living room. What is it that you want to see in that frame each time you walk into the room, and what is it that you want your friends to notice or com-ment on first? Is it the stark shapes of the mountain peaks? The contrast of the yellow of the autumn leaves against the rich blue sky? And what about the water in the stream: Do you want it frozen as it surges along, or do you want a smooth satin ribbon of water flowing over the rocks? Each element of the subject

Here are a couple of tips that I found useful when honing my visualization skills:

■ Keep a small notebook with you and take notes. Each time that you take a photograph, take a moment jot down a few notes about what you were trying to capture — both tech-nically and emotionally — and why you exposed the shot the way you did. While your camera’s metadata records the cold, hard facts of each exposure (ISO, shutter speed, f-stop, exposure compensation, and so on), it can’t record your mental meanderings. In the heat of creative passion you may think that you’ll remember why you wanted the shadow behind the barn to be black or why you thought the meadow would look cheerier if you overex-posed it by two stops. But if you shoot a few dozen (or a few hundred if you’re like me) frames that day, odds are that you won’t remember half of what you were thinking. Even if you never look at those notes again, the act of analyzing the scene and writing your thoughts and goals forces you to focus more on

ABOUT THIS PHOTO

I used contrast to my advan-

tage here by exposing for the

bright sun on the delicate

rose petals and letting the

background go completely

black. Shot at ISO 400, f/16,

1/160 sec. with a 105mm

Micro Nikkor lens.

1-19


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spending endless minutes polishing every minute detail of a pebble, I was losing sight of the more flamboyant and experimental nature of art. If you’re wondering how a waterfall would look if you exposed it for a half second rather than a quarter of a second, great, but don’t stop there. How would it look if you exposed it for 10 seconds? Or 30? You won’t know until you try and you’ll learn so much more by making huge leaps than by creeping cautiously along hoping that you’re not mak-ing a mistake. Make mistakes. Make huge mistakes. To know what your camera and your imagination are capable of you need to lose all fear of making “bad” exposures. Whenever I’m confronted by choices and I find myself making incremental adjustments, I hear that wonderful woman’s voice in my head shouting, “Bold strokes, bold strokes!”

Often all it takes to turn a mundane photograph into a memorable one is a simple adjustment in the exposure, but first you need to try to visualize what you want in the final image. In the photo-graph of a red tulip in 1-20, I really wanted that rich red color to contrast with the green foliage, and so I took an overall meter reading using my built-in matrix-metering mode and then underex-posed one stop to increase saturation. You don’t have to have exotic locales to test many of these

has to be considered, and you have to decide how you want each to be represented in the finished image.

■ Answer the question “What would happen if …?” An old friend of mine, the late great photographer and teacher Fred Picker, one of the masters of exposure theory, once told me that the most frequent and frustrating letters he got began with the question, “Dr. Mr. Picker, Do you know what would happen if I …” And then the writer would proceed to ask him what would happen if he tried this exposure or that lens filter or processed their film in the wrong developer. Fred’s response was always the same: Try it and see! You must always answer the question: “What would happen if …” when it comes to making expo-sure and visualization decisions because each situation is unique and unless you answer the question, no one will.

■ Don’t fear bold strokes. I had a really fun student art teacher in high school who believed in my then dismal creative skills a lot more than I did. But when she saw me agoniz-ing over whether I should add another leaf to a tree or another ripple to a sandbar, she would holler to the class in a longshoreman’s voice: “Bold strokes! Bold strokes! Stop tor-turing the details!” She was right. While I was

METADATA Although I have always carried small notebooks with me when photograph-

ing, digital cameras have eliminated the need to write down exposure data because all digital

cameras record the metadata (also called EXIF data) for every exposure that you make as a

part of the image file. You can access this data through most image-editing or image-man-

agement programs, or with the software that came with your camera. The metadata records

an extraordinary amount of data about each image, including the type of camera used, the

lens and focal length, exposure information, ISO, white balance, and even whether you had

the flash on. Learn to access your data, and you can learn a tremendous amount about your

images. Where was this gem of technological wizardry when I was learning photography?


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by himself on the backyard swings. In landscapes, for example, weather often establishes the mood of a scene. After enduring a frustrating week of bad weather along coastal Texas, I decided that getting shots of the weather, as in 1-21, was more productive than cursing the weather channel. Without mood, even some of the most stunning scenes in the world just fall flat because they carry no emotional weight. Mood captures the way a moment felt, not just the way that it looked.

techniques; your backyard, a small patio garden, or a local park will do fine. The time to start thinking about how an image will look is not after you’ve pressed the shutter release button, but before. That theory is just as true if you’re using the simple point-and-shoot camera as it is if you’re using a dSLR (digital single lens reflex) camera.

EXPOSURE AND MOOD

In addition to revealing a subject or setting in an interesting light and from an interesting angle, a good photograph should capture some of the emotional climate or mood of the moment — the mystery of a woodland scene shrouded in mist, the foreboding of a storm brewing over a harbor, or even the melancholy of a child sitting

ABOUT THIS PHOTO

A simple one-stop adjustment

in the exposure of this tulip

was enough to make the red

color really pop out from its

deep green surroundings.

Taken at ISO 100, f/3.5, 1/60

sec. with a compact digital

camera handheld.

Mist and fog add a lot of atmosphere

to landscape shots, but they can fool

your camera’s meter into thinking there is more light in

a scene than there really is. In Chapter 10, I discuss

techniques that provide accurate readings in a variety

of weather situations.

x-ref

1-20


24

ABOUT THIS PHOTO A storm brewing over the Gulf of Mexico in the Padre Island

National Seashore. Shot at ISO 800, f/2.8, 1/60 sec. with a compact digital camera handheld.

1-21


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If you’ve ever taken a snapshot of mountain scen-ery and had the photos come out much darker than you expected, but it turned out that you liked the moody look of the shot, that’s an exam-ple of how a slight shift in exposure can enhance the emotional charge of a picture. In that particu-lar case, your camera was fooled by the bright light bouncing off the clouds and was tricked into underexposing the image. The exposure may have been technically “wrong,” but that dark exposure really helped elicit the mood of the scene — a happy and creative mistake.

How important is mood? The next time you’re in a big tourist destination, check out the pictures on the postcard rack. Postcard publishers go to great lengths to make scenes as exciting and romantic as they can because that’s what sells cards. Face it, if you’re given a choice between a postcard of Miami Beach at high noon and one bathed in a radiant sunset, which one are you going to buy?

Many factors can enhance the emotional charge in a scene, and exposure itself isn’t always a domi-nating factor, but it can play a big role in intensi-fying mood with certain subjects. Knowing how and when to tweak the exposure to help convey mood is very important, though, and it’s some-thing to keep in mind when you’re shooting potentially dramatic scenes. For example, some-times you just get lucky when it comes to finding


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lightening light-tone subjects; if you start to lose detail in the bright tones (the skin or leaves, for example), you’ve gone too far.

The key thing to remember when shooting moody scenes is not to be afraid of losing the shot by straying too far from the (here’s that word again) correct exposure. Mood and emotional response are based largely on the exaggeration of normal factors, and photos are rarely as dramatic as they could be if shot at a safe exposure. Experiment with both moderate under- and over-exposure to see if the changes enhance the mood. If the first thing someone says when looking at one of your moody photographs is “Wow!” then you know you’re on the right path.

moody scenes, but tweaking the exposure still helps you exaggerate the drama of the moment, as shown in 1-22.

Bright and airy scenes tend to create happier moods, and you can often enhance that mood by making your exposure just a tad lighter than what the camera’s meter indicates is a good exposure. In the portrait of the little girl blowing bubbles shown in 1-23, I added an extra stop of exposure using exposure compensation to keep the mood bright and airy. In the shot of the brilliant yellow Ginkgo leaves in 1-24, I intentionally added one-third f-stop (a relatively tiny amount) using expo-sure compensation to create a more cheerful, carefree mood. Because I realized later that a third of a stop wasn’t enough compensation, I lightened the image further while editing the RAW file. However, whether you do it in-camera or during editing, you have to be careful when

Exposure compensation is a quick

way to add or subtract light from an

exposure. I talk more about this feature in Chapter 3.

x-ref

1-22 ABOUT THIS PHOTO

I shot this wild sunset after a

storm at a beach on Long Island

Sound in Connecticut, and all

that I did to get the clouds so

dark was set a meter reading

for the bright area of the sky.

This shot looks exactly as it did

coming out of my camera — I

did no editing. Shot at ISO 100,

f/5.9, 1/500 sec. handheld with a

70-300mm Nikkor lens.


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1-23

1-24

ABOUT THIS PHOTO

When it comes to portraits, I

like to try to match the expo-

sure to the mood — in this

case, going slightly lighter in

the skin tones and background

to enhance the happy summer

mood. Shot at ISO 100, f/2.8,

1/160 sec. with a compact digi-

tal camera.

ABOUT THIS PHOTO

I photographed this bril-

liantly colored Ginkgo tree

against a bright autumn sky

at ISO 200, f/11, 1/125 sec.

+1/3-stop exposure compen-

sation on a tripod using a

70-300mm Nikkor zoom lens.

I later lightened the image

about 1 stop in editing.


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Oz–like curtain (real or imagined) between you and the printer and it was rare that anyone pulled the curtain back to expose the man at the con-trols. I worked in a commercial lab and I can tell you that the last thing I had time for was, oddly enough, talking to customers. But again, things have changed in the digital world. Lab employees know that people can make their own prints and they are losing a lot of customers to the desktop printer. So when a serious photographer walks in the door with digital files that were obviously well crafted, they will be thrilled to join in the creative pursuit.

The key thing, I think, is to develop a relation-ship with a particular lab and let those people get to know the kinds of things you shoot and how you like your prints handled. Different people react differently to the same print and the lab employees will become familiar with what you like (More contrast? More saturation?) if they see enough of your work.

Probably the best way to find a great local lab is just to ask other photographers and then have a few test prints made based on their suggestions.

MONITOR CALIBRATION

There is a tremendously funny scene in the clas-sic humor book Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House by Eric Hodgins (also a very funny movie with Cary Grant and Myrna Loy) where Mrs. Blandings is trying to describe to her interior dec-orator the color of paint that she wants in her liv-ing room: “The color is to be a soft green, not as bluish as a robin’s egg, but not as yellow as daffo-dil buds. The sample enclosed, which is the best I could get, is a little too yellow, but don’t let who-ever mixes it go to the other extreme and get it too blue. It should just be a sort of grayish apple green.”

ARTFUL EXPOSURE AND THE COMMERCIAL LAB

Now that I’ve thoroughly (and eloquently, I might add) covered the need to make great and carefully considered exposures, one question begs asking: How well will these exposures hold up if you hand off your files to a commercial lab for printing? Excellent question. Since the advent of quality digital cameras and inexpensive desktop photo printers, anyone who has an interest can learn to make superb quality prints. I think that the capability of average photographers to make their own prints is one of the prime reasons that digital photography grew so rapidly. Learning to make high-quality prints is fun and it’s certainly the best way to control how your exposures are translated to their ultimate destination: the fine print. But you may not have the time, energy, or desire to be your own custom lab.

If all that you’re printing are snapshots from the family vacation, then almost any lab can make acceptable prints. And there’s no point in spend-ing a fortune on ink and paper to make run-of-the-mill album photos at home. (Have you seen the price of ink lately? Zowie!) But there will be times when you want to make very high-quality prints for gifts, exhibitions, or just to hang in your own home. And even if you are a skilled printer, unless you are a professional photographer and can justify the time and expense, you are still going to hand off a lot of your images to a lab for printing. Either that or you’re going to have to pay someone to walk and feed the dog for you while you print. And when it comes to making really big prints, a lab is almost a necessity.

Finding a good lab is not as difficult as it might sound, even if you only occasionally make impor-tant prints. In the film days there was a Wizard of


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more frustrating when you get a lab print that looks disappointingly dismal because you thought they knew what they were doing. You’ll rant and rave and wave your arms around and threaten to never use that lab again (Okay, that’s probably a slight exaggeration), but it’s not their fault. Instead, blame the lack of clear communication between your computer and monitor and theirs.

There does not, however, necessarily have to be such a failure to communicate (and thank you Cool Hand Luke) between monitors and printers. Given the right tools, monitors and printers can share a very precise understanding of exact colors. Establishing that line of communication is called calibrating your monitor.

Calibration is simply a method of setting your monitor and computer to display images accord-ing to a set of established color and brightness/contrast standards. Once you’ve calibrated your monitor accurately, the red rose that you see on your monitor should look remarkably (though not perfectly) similar to the ones that come out of your printer (or the print that you paid big bucks for at the local custom lab). And here’s the cool thing: If you do a good job of calibrating your monitor, even a relatively inexpensive lab (such as the drugstore) will make much better enlarge-ments for you because its monitors and printers are usually set to exacting standards (whether the heavily pierced, tattooed kid operating the machine knows it or not).

There are actually two methods of calibrating your images: one that is software based (meaning it doesn’t require any additional equipment) and one that is hardware based (it requires buying a calibration tool). Regardless of which method that you choose, you should recalibrate your monitor regularly (monthly is common) and before any major printing project.

The decorator patiently listens to her detailed (not to mention inventive) description, but he knows that she’s probably never going to be satis-fied with the color that he chooses. Still, her painstaking efforts to describe the specific color she wants are very well intentioned: she’s trying to find a common color language with the deco-rator so that she gets precisely the room color that she sees in her mind’s eye.

Mrs. Blandings’ problem and the problem that you’re going to have when you print your own photos (or when you take them to a lab to be printed) is that, at least in terms of human lan-guage, there is no way to absolutely identify a spe-cific color. And if you’ve ever made a color print that looked nothing at all like what you saw on your monitor, you know that getting two machines to agree on the precise color of a pretty blue sky is no piece of cake either. You might get lucky and stumble onto a print that looks exactly the way you want it but that looks nothing at all like the image on your monitor. If you reedit the image on screen to match the print, then next time you print that file, it’s not going to look any-thing like the first print. This is just the kind of problem that makes perfectly happy photogra-phers perfectly miserable.

Similarly, one of the problems that you will encounter in using a lab to print your pictures is that the image that you see on your computer’s monitor and the image that they see on theirs are invariably different — often, in fact, they are laughably different. The truth is that no two monitors will ever see the same image exactly alike because each interprets things like color, hue, contrast, and white balance differently. And that is true even if the computer and monitor are exactly the same make and model.

A photo of a pretty red rose with bright green foliage may look perfect on your monitor and yet look horrid coming out of your printer. It’s even


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range in price from a few hundred to several hun-dred dollars). It’s not a difficult tool to use, but will probably take you an hour or two to read the instructions and perform the first calibration.

Essentially this system uses a color calibration tool that hangs in front of your monitor and takes exact readings of specific colors, brightness, and so on. The software that comes with the calibra-tion tool then adjusts those colors to known stan-dards. Because it is giving each color a specific and standard numerical value, the image that you’re seeing on your monitor and the informa-tion that your printer is receiving should be very similar.

If you are going to be making a lot of important prints from your files (at home or via a lab), I strongly suggest that you invest in and learn how to use a hardware calibration tool. I also suggest that you talk to a few professional photographers or lab employees and ask their advice about mon-itor calibration and color management overall.

SOFTWARE CALIBRATION

Software calibration is fairly simple to do and, at the very least, puts your monitor in the ballpark (compared to its out-of-the-box state) in terms of brightness, contrast, and color balance. Using the software is simply a matter of making a series of subjective judgments about what you are seeing on the screen. The reason that this method is not as accurate as hardware calibration, of course, is because it is a completely subjective process and the downfall of using any subjective system is that it remains largely a matter of how things look to your eyes and in your unique environment. You’re back in the Blandings Zone.

The actual calibration software that

you will use depends on your com-

puter system and your editing software. Mac OS has a

built-in calibration utility called ColorSync and the

Adobe Photoshop and Photoshop Elements programs

have software calibration built into them. For Windows

users there are a lot of cheap or even free calibration

programs online. Whatever program you use, once you

have finished the software routine, you simply name

the profile you’ve just created and save it.

tip

Monitor calibration is really just one

aspect of a larger spectrum of color

control systems called color management. Color man-

agement takes into consideration not only the color

space and profile for your monitor, but also the entire

image-creation chain, including the camera, monitor,

printer, and scanner. An excellent book on this topic is

Color Management for Digital Photographers For Dummies

by Ted Padova and Don Mason (Wiley, 2007).

tip

HARDWARE CALIBRATION

Hardware calibration is far more precise and accurate, but requires you to purchase and learn how to use a calibration tool (typically these


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Remember to visit www.pwassignments.com after you complete this assignment and

share your favorite photo! It’s a community of enthusiastic photographers and a great

place to view what other readers have created. You can also post comments, read encour-

aging suggestions, and get feedback.

Assignment

Practice Your Exposure Skills on a Piece of ArchitectureFor your first assignment, I’d like you to photograph a piece of architecture — either in whole, or

a piece of architectural detail. This is the first assignment I’ve been giving my students for years

and one of the main reasons is that buildings are stationary — you can return to them as often as

you like, at different times of day and in different weather. Your “building” can be anything you

like: the dog house in your backyard, your local city hall, or perhaps your favorite hot dog stand.

Visit it several times and see if you can’t find the true personality of the building. Don’t worry

about creative exposure yet — just get a good basic exposure in the Automatic mode.

I photographed this detail of the Vanderbilt Mansion in Hyde Park, New York. I’d been trying to

get a good shot of the entire building all day and then just as the sun hit the horizon, its last rays

ignited this bit of detail and I knew I had found an interesting shot. I quickly shot several expo-

sures, but this was one of two or three that I really liked. Taken with a compact digital camera at

ISO 100, f/6.5, 1/60 sec.


exposure photo workshop

Documents

moodartful exposure

mastering creative exposure

wellexecuted exposure

ordinary subject

potential subject

brilliant subject

creative angle

creative experiences