Photography Education

Sharing knowledge....very cool Sean

 

Thank you sir. When I started doing this as a business 15 years ago, I could barely get someone to give me the time of day let alone any advice on technique. Now, while I try to restart the studio here in Denver, I want to do the opposite. I don't feel like I'm giving away any trade secrets. You will never see like I do. You will never edit like I do. Those are the things that define us and our creative vision. Not the mechanics of operating a camera.

If I can share some tidbits that helps someone take a better picture of their next adventure, their child's next birthday or even their truck, then that makes me a happy camper.

 

Day job has me on the road for the next two weeks. I'm not sure how much writing I'll get done so, it's a 2fer week. Next lesson, exposure.

Lesson 4 - Exposure

Before we jump into talking about exposure, let’s take a few minutes to review the past few lessons.

We started with learning to see and how to train our creative vision to pick up the small details in our everyday lives. Stopping to smell the roses so to speak. From there, we built on seeing with some rules and guidelines on composition. That was a lot of information so I hope it sat well. With the last lesson, we started going over specific controls on the camera and how they relate to exposure.

That leaves us with a perfect lead in to this lesson, all things exposure.

As with everything we’ve been talking about, exposure is subjective. Yes, there is a correct and an incorrect exposure but it depends on your vision. Are you going for dramatic shadows? Maybe high key? Use exposure to help you define and isolate your subject. Doing that may mean you have over exposed (blown) highlights which is totally okay. Think first. Shoot second.

In the previous lesson, we spoke about equivalent exposures. If I start with one setting, f/4 at 1/250, and I make a one stop increase in aperture (5.6), I have to make an equivalent decrease in shutter speed (125). This allows me to decide how much depth of field I want or whether I want to stop or blur motion.

What is exposure? It is the combination of the light’s brightness that reaches the sensor (controlled by aperture) and the length of time (shutter speed) that the light touches the sensor. With film, the more light that reaches it, the higher the silver density. When you look at a negative, these are the “light” areas. With digital, the more light that reaches the sensor, the more excited the electrons get for specific pixels.

How do we make an exposure? To make an exposure, we need to meter the scene or subject we want to photograph. How do we meter? There are two types of meters, reflected and incident light. Reflected light is the light reflected off the subject. This is the type of meter built into your camera. Incident light is the light that is falling, from either the sun or an artificial light source, on your subject. Incident meters are handheld and can vary from simple and inexpensive to complex and very expensive. In the first lesson, when I talked about seeing light, I was referring to the incident light that is falling all around you.

A meter, whether in your camera or handheld, is designed to expose for medium gray. This is referred to 18% gray. The meter takes all of the tones in the scene, from black to white, and calculates the average to get the medium gray. Sometimes you may hear reference to a gray card which is nothing more than a piece of card stock colored to 18% gray. You take a meter off the card rather than the scene as a whole to get your incident reading. Another trick to get a similar reading is to use the palm of your hand. I use this often with my street photography.

Modern camera bodies can get very complex in how they determine meter settings. I’m going to talk in general terms that should cover everyone whether you’re using Fuji, Canon, Sony or Nikon.

Your camera can function in full auto mode, sometimes denoted by the letter P. You have no control in this mode. The camera decides all sides of the exposure triangle: shutter, aperture and ISO. There is also shutter priority and aperture priority modes. Shutter priority is denoted by Tv and allows you to pick the shutter speed and ISO. The camera then chooses the equivalent aperture. Aperture mode, Av, allows you to pick the aperture and ISO while the camera chooses the shutter. The last mode, M, is full manual. You pick the shutter, aperture and ISO.

In my own work, close to 90% of the time, I am in Av mode. The remaining time is manual. I can’t remember ever using Tv. My personal preference is to control depth of field first.

Your camera also has different metering modes. These modes are matrix, or evaluative, center-weighted and spot. Some cameras may offer a partial metering. Matrix/evaluative metering makes an average reading for the scene as a whole. Center-weighted takes a meter reading off the center of the image. This center is denoted by the circle in the center of your viewfinder. The spot meter reduces the size of that circle to about 3% of the overall image size. Partial metering sits between spot and center-weighted.

Similar to camera modes, in my own work, 90% of the time I use center-weighted metering. The rest is spot.

You may be wondering how to use center-weighted or spot metering when your subject is not in the exact center of the frame. Your camera has an exposure lock, or AE lock, button. On my Canons, this is on the back of the camera directly underneath by right thumb. It has an asterix on it.

If I am in center-weighted mode, I would take the following steps:

• Aim the camera at my subject and depress the shutter halfway to get a meter reading.
• Depress the AE lock button to lock the exposure reading.
• Re-aim the camera for my composition.
• Fully press the shutter to take the picture.

You have now used center-weighted metering around your subject even though that subject is in the direct center of your frame.

Let’s go through a few examples.

First example is having a subject against a light, or bright, background. This is a contrasty scene that can give your camera some fits. With evaluative metering, your camera will give an exposure as an average for the scene. If the background is bright, when the camera creates the average, your subject will become dark (underexposed).

To fix this, there are a couple of things we can do. We could switch to center-weighted or spot metering and use the steps above with the AE lock. The other option would be to step in close to your subject, take the meter reading while close then step back and take the picture.

The second example is the opposite, your subject is on a dark background. In this case, the camera will lighten the image causing your subject to be overexposed. The steps to fix this scenario are the same.

The final example is for a landscape. In these images, we sometimes have lots of sky. The sky can be a very bright light source which would cause things on the ground to come out underexposed. We could point our camera down and meter of the ground which would allow those elements to be correctly exposed but, our sky may become overexposed. This is fixable in a couple of ways. We could use a neutral density gradient filter which would darken the top half of the scene but leave the bottom untouched. Or, we can make the fix digitally in post-processing. If we were more interested in what the sky was doing, we would meter the sky and not worry about the ground elements.

What if we want to photograph a subject in the landscape? Maybe the subject is too far away for us to get close or make an accurate center/spot meter. Earlier, I had mentioned metering off the palm of my hand. This is an excellent substitution and easily reachable. The average, light toned skin is roughly one stop lighter than 18%, medium, gray. If you meter your palm, you will need to adjust the exposure on your camera to be one stop more than what the camera says. If your camera tells you f/5.6 at 1/250, you will want to use f/4 or 1/125, depending on where you want your depth of field.

The same thing happens with snow. Winter is on its way and many of us will be continuing our time outdoors. If we take a picture while skiing or hiking or camping in the snow, the camera will make all of that brightness a medium gray. We want that snow to be white because that’s the way it is unless you’re photographing the leftovers in the gutter. To get it back to white, we need to increase the exposure by at least one stop. Depending on the scene, we may need more.

This leads us to exposure zones. Ansel Adams came up with a method called the Zone System. This tied together pre-visualizing the scene, exposing the scene and making the print. Volumes have been written on this with the most comprehensive being written by Ansel himself. If you’re interested, there are three books: The Camera, The Negative and The Print. Well worth the read.

I will go into the Zone System a bit but a good general rule to follow is: expose for the highlights, print (process) for the shadows. You have to treat digital like slide film. If you overexpose the highlights, they are gone forever.

In the Zone System, a scene is divided into 10 zones. Zone 0 is pure black. Zone 10 is pure white. Everything in between is a shade of gray. Zone 5 is the medium gray that your camera meter sees.



If we’re looking at a scene to photographer, whether it’s a landscape or a portrait or a still life, we need to decide which parts of it are important and which we can discard. Are there bright areas where we want to keep detail? Are there white areas that need to be kept white and blacks that we want to keep black? Again, think first, shoot second.

Let’s use the snow example from earlier. We’ve gone for a winter hike. The night before was a snow storm. The trail is covered. The trees are bending under the weight of perfect snow pillows. The light is filtering through the trees creating beautiful highlights in the snow and shadows across the trail.

If we take the default metering from the camera, this scene will be a flat muddy gray. We would have lost all the contrast and texture. How do we get it back? We should meter off a bright area of the image, a piece of sunlit snow, and adjust our exposure so that it will be in zones 7 or 8. Remember, we still want texture. Once we do that, the rest of the tones of the image will fall into place. We’ve now exposed for the highlights. When we edit, we’ll adjust for the shadows and contrast and end up with something like these.



You’re probably wondering if this system works only with black and white. It does not. I can use the same concepts when working with color. It just takes a little more visualization. For landscapes, I generally base my initial exposure off a clear patch of blue sky and go from there. When I was freelancing for the surf magazines, I was shooting slide film. I played a few tricks in the development process but I always metered off the horizon line. This gave a very good base exposure and a great tonal range across the entire image.

With portraits, I will generally go off the face as this is the most important. There are a lot of other factors such as clothing and background but we’ll save that for another discussion.

When you’re out in the field, how do you think you can tell if your exposure is correct or not? In the old days of film, unless you wanted to shoot a polaroid, you couldn’t. I took a lot of notes. Camera settings. Weather. Location. Lighting. Film types. Development settings. With the advent of digital, this became easier because of the histogram.

The histogram is a graph that is generated for each image you shoot. Your camera should provide you with two types of histograms. One for the overall tonal range of the image and another for the RGB (red, green, blue) values of the image.

Since the histogram is a graph, our X-axis is the tonal range from pure black to pure white (zones 0 - 10). This is divided into three sections. The far left contains the shadows. The far right contains the highlights. The middle contains the midtones. The Y-axis contains the number of pixels that are in that tone.

Our goal for a correctly exposed image is to have a nice bell curve shape over the entire graph. We want the curve to just barely touch the left and right edges of the graph. If things are pushed up to the right, then we are overexposed. If pushed to the left, we are underexposed.

We can make an exposure and then immediately check the histogram to see where everything falls. If it isn’t what we want, we can adjust and take another. Digital isn’t free but it certainly is cheaper than film.

The goal is to get to the point where aren’t constantly checking the back of the camera with every image. This is why I started these lessons with learning to see. If we touch ourselves to see, to understand what the light is doing and how it affects aspects of the scene, we can find the right exposure without thinking too much or adjust it to our creative vision. In situations with lots going on, such as a wedding, you don’t want to lose precious moments because you were checking the LCD.

Ok. That’s a long read. Let’s call it here for now. Get out and practice. Memorize equivalent settings so that they become muscle memory. Play with depth of field and shutter speeds. Understand what they do and why to choose one over the other. Take that camera out of P mode, pick a static scene and adjust everything. Make notes on what changed and why you may or may not like those changes. Start making a catalog.

Next lesson, editing.

 

I'm lost. I hate being a hands on learner sometimes. I'll reread in a few when i don't feel so overwhelmed.

But here are some pics from tonight....

 

Nice!

 

thanks

 

Here's a cool colored sky I seen one morning when I was outside with my dog. Not super clear but cool.

 

That's awesome!!!

 

Thanks.

 

don't feel overwhelmed. i threw out a ton of information that took me 15 years to put in my head and i have a lot more to share. i, too, am a hands on learner. i taught myself all of this. i never went to art school or anything even remotely similar. it just takes practice and patience. photography isn't about hurrying. it's not about instant gratification. there are these moments in time that speak to us. sometimes people write them. others paint them. others pick up a camera. this is about waiting for that moment that speaks to you and freezing it. once you recognize the moments, everything else falls into place. the basics of all of this is nothing more than mechanical muscle memory. it's the seeing part that can be the most difficult.

of those three, i like the last one best. first one has the fence pole on the right which could be cropped out, no big deal. 2 and 3 are similar but i like the shape of the tree line in 3 better. there are no gaps. just enough to define a horizon. the real magic is in the sky and you found it. find some more.

 

sweet. red skies in the morning...

 

so, @4x4_Angel, brings up a good point. maybe i went too fast with too much. let's dial it back. what would be most helpful for you guys?

 

You can actually overlap 2 & 3 and make a larger picture....and yes i agree....3 is the best. i did no editing to any of these pictures

 

Working on learning all this Sean....I enjoy your lessons! thank you!

 

@smslavin this is a great thread. I've always been fascinated with photography but just never really went for it. I'm always the one behind the camera at family outings so this thread is a great learning experience for me

Thank you again and to @4x4_Angel for asking sean to start this thread

 

just glad I'm not the only one interested

 

You guys are more than welcome. As soon ad my day job travel slows up a bit, I’ll get back to working this. Just a little overloaded right now.

 

take your time!! 4 weeks on the road is exhausting

 

It's been a while since I last posted. Life got a little complicated to say the least. Anyway, I have to play catch up now. I did watch the video you recommended. My favorite part is when he talks about putting the dominant eye in the middle of the picture. How something so simple has such an effect. Now, let's see if I've got the concepts.
This is one of my favorites that I've taken:
Gamut
Not quite sure in this picture

Intervals
The branches, all coming out from the center like an exploding star.

Major lines
Horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines intercept in the center. The vertical line, i think, helps the viewer understand the point of view. From below looking up.

Reciprocal


Arabesque


Greatest Area of Contrast
This would be a dark subject against a light background. There is also a nice pattern of dark branches and the light peaking through in between. Also between the dark coconuts and the bright yellow/orange ones.

Rule of thirds/eyes
Well, it is smack down the middle, but in this case it works.

Leading lines
I would say the trunk of the tree leads my eyes upwards to the center of the image.

Golden triangle/ratio
I don't know if/how it can be applied here.

How did I do?

I now have to find a camera that'll let me modify it's settings to play with them. It's somewhere in the house...
Is there an app that'll let you modify the settings on the phone camera?

 

iPhone 7plus, no pro (construction worker) lol

 

subbed

 

small f-stop (aperture) numbers = larger opening = more light = less depth of field
larger f-stop numbers = smaller opening = less light = more depth of field

shutter speed, aperture and ISO are all related. you cannot adjust one without affecting the other but you can create equivalencies.



just come by the house...

 

here's what i want you to do. put the stuffed t-rex on one end of your kitchen counter. put the camera at the other. set the camera to Av mode with an ISO that gives you a well exposed image. maybe 800 if you do it this evening.

start at the largest aperture (smallest number) you can get with your lens. take a picture. go to the next full stop. for example, if you started at 2.8, go to 4, then 5.6 then 8, etc, until you get to the smallest aperture (largest number) you can. compare the pictures.

 

Damn! I just found this. I will have to catch up.

 

This is really awesome of you to do this.

 

hey. so, um, i know it's been a bit but, is anyone interested in my continuing this? if so, toss out some ideas for things you're interested in or are having trouble with. more than willing to try and revive this for folks. just let me know.

 

Just found this thread. I was on here because of my two Tundras but love photography. Mostly do Milky Way and wildlife.