Photography Education

Sean Slavin

Adventurist
I thought I'd start a thread teaching some photography stuffs. We have a hobby that screams for photography and I'd like to help everyone get a little better at it. I want this to be open and engaging. I'll be posting one 'lesson' per week but please feel free to jump and add your own tidbits and advice. I am a Canon guy but I will be keeping this as generic as possible. You may occasionally need to translate what I say into Nikon, Sony, Fuji or your brand of choice. I am going to start basic, like really basic, and work through to topics as advanced as you would like to get. If there are specific topics you would like to cover, let me know and I will start making a list.

Before we start here's a quick blurb about my background.

I started shooting 15 years ago. I turned it into a full time business a couple of years after that. I am completely self taught. My degrees are in computer science and biology. My studio focused on weddings and family portraits but I also did freelance work for Surfer and Surfing and worked through an agency for some commercial stuff. Most of that was sold to Surfline, Quicksilver, Hurley, etc. The surf photography was for fun and my creative outlet from doing weddings every weekend. The wedding/portrait work funded the surf work. For a variety of reasons, that should be saved for a campfire discussion over beers, I had to close the studio but, I am currently exploring options for a new studio here in Denver that focuses more on high end portraits and commercial work.

With that as an introduction, how 'bout we get started?
 
Lesson 1: Learning to See

If you break it down, what is photography really about? At its core? It’s really about your ability to see. To really see. You need to see details, nuances, the little things that are commonly missed.

Just like any muscle, your vision needs to be exercised. As part of exercising your vision, you begin to develop your own sense of style. As with any art, photography is totally subjective. Beauty in the eyes of the beholder and all that. With that being said, there’s a good chance that whatever your find visually pleasing, someone else will as well.

Your goal for an end result is to have an image that draws the viewer in. Something that gives them pause, details that give their eyes a reason to keep hunting.

Now, how do you learn how to see? Funnily enough, a camera is not involved.

The first step is seeking out other art that speaks to you. It can be other photography or paintings or films or dance or… You get the picture. When you find that thing, let yourself fall into it. Get completely absorbed. Then, pick it apart. What is that you like? Where does your eye start? Where does it travel? Is there a pattern? Do you even like the pattern?

I study a lot of art. A few times a month, I like to go to the art museum and just sit. Sometimes I’m watching the art. Sometimes I’m watching the people. Occasionally, I take a camera with me and photograph people studying the art.

I also draw inspiration from a number of different genres of photography. My biggest source comes from conflict photographers. James Nachtwey, one of the co-founders of the VII photo agency, is at the top of that list followed closely by Tim Hetherington. If you would like to get an idea of who these men are and were, take a peek at the following films: War Photographer, Restrepo and Which Way Is The Front Line From Here. If I could redo certain aspects of my life, I would have made a bigger push to be a conflict photographer. Crazy, I know, but I've always been drawn to it. Anyway, there are others but those two managed to put humanity into their conflict images. Something that is extremely difficult to do. Sadly, Tim died in Misrata, Libya 6 years ago from a gunshot wound. From them, I developed my documentary vision.

The second step is to get outside. Open your eyes to life unfolding around you. Why does something, or someone, suddenly catch your eye? Is it a color? A shadow? It could be the shape of something. Maybe it’s the lines of the highway or a building that draw you to something off in the distance. Take a mental picture. Start building a catalog of these little things. You’ll need them when we start talking about composition.

Now, we’ve found some art that speaks to us and we’ve started to look at our world just a little bit differently. Nope, we’re not picking up a camera yet. There’s one more thing to study.

Light.

You need to be able to see light. I know it sounds weird but hear me out.

Light has a few basic qualities. It can be hard or soft. It can be warm or cool. As a photographer, you need to understand how to take those qualities and bend them to your vision. Your vision, while it is made up of all of the things I mentioned above, is also about what you want that final product to be. More on that later.

The sun is very far away but is a very large light source. This makes it hard. Take a look around you. Are the edges of the shadows distinct or fuzzy? What happens when that cloud passes overhead? The light softens and the shadows get a little fuzzy. How does the light change with the seasons? When that light changes, where is the sun in the sky? My first tipoff that fall is coming is not the weather. It’s the subtle change in the light. The sun dips south, some of the harshness dissipates, mornings and evenings become slightly warmer.

Between now and the next lesson, I would like you to just see. Take notes, written or mental, and post up what you have discovered. What did you see? What did you like/not like? How did the light affect what you were seeing? Did what you were seeing give you any kind of emotion?

Next up, composition.
 
Ok, here's lesson 2. It's a lot to cover and I tried to be as concise as possible.

Lesson 2: Composition

There are rules. Some of them are pretty esoteric. Some of them are pretty basic. Some get touted as needed to be followed. All. The. Time. Rules are there to provide guidelines and structure. There are meant to be broken. But, before you can break them, you need to understand them.

com・po・si・tion

noun
  • The artistic arrangement of the parts of a picture
When you look at a particular image, whether it’s a photograph, a painting, or just walking down the street, you have an instant reaction to it. You are either drawn completely into it or you go a little cross eyed with the feeling that something is just a wee bit off. That image that made you go, “Oh my god, that’s awesome.” has some basic geometric principles behind it. Yep, math. Remember when you were sitting in 7th grade geometry wondering when you would ever use it, now is the time.

First off, let’s define a few things so we’re all on the same page. Here is some basic terminology.
  • Eyes: An image can be divided into two vertical and two horizontal lines. This is the basis for the Rule of Thirds which will get to below. The four intersection of these lines are called the eyes.
  • Gamut: This is the limited number of shapes or diagonals to use in a composition. The concept of less is more is what to follow here. The rhythm of an image is created by using a gamut.
  • Intervals: These are repeated lines that give a rhythm to the image.
  • Major Lines: Part of creating an image, painting or photograph, is to define a hierarchy. This hierarchy is what helps a viewer understand what they are looking at. In every image there is a single horizontal, vertical and diagonal line that is the main reference point for the composition.
  • Reciprocal: Back to our geometry. This is a line that intersects a diagonal at 90º. In our image, this line should be supporting and reinforcing the diagonal.
  • Arabesque: This is nothing more than a curve. It can help unify elements as well as provide a path for a your eye to wander the image.
  • Greatest Area of Contrast: I’m not a fan of adding to the alphabet soup of acronyms but I’m going to shorten this one to GAC. This is the spot where a viewer’s eye will be drawn to first. It is nothing more than light vs dark and you, like a moth, are drawn to the light areas first.
Let’s a take a moment and talk about diagonals. Diagonals help create visual rhythm to an image. If there isn’t a readily available diagonal, get low or get high. Lines are everywhere and something will present itself.

We have two types of diagonals: Baroque and Sinister. The Baroque diagonal, lower left to top right, creates left to right movement which, for most of us, can be more pleasing as that is the direction we read. Going the other direction, lower right to top left, is the Sinister direction. This direction is more aggressive, hence the name, in that it is opposite to the flow we are used to seeing.

If we take the diagonals and use a GAC, we can create natural uphill or downhill movements.
  • If the GAC is in the lower left on a Baroque diagonal, you’ve created a natural uphill movement and your eyes will quickly go left to right.
  • If the GAC is in the upper right on a Baroque, it will remain pushed uphill. Your eye will not allow it to roll down as you are continuously reading from left to right.
  • If the GAC is in the lower right on a Sinister diagonal, your eye will naturally keep it pushed down in the corner and your brain will have to work extra hard to get your eye to move to something else in the image.
  • If the GAC is in the upper left on a Sinister, you’ve created a back and forth movement. You start at the left, with the GAC, read downhill to the right but then are naturally drawn back to the left because of the GAC. This can be referred to as magnetic momentum.
Now, let’s revisit the arabesque.

In Gestalt Psychology, there is a principle called the Law of Continuity. I imagine you are now scratching your head. I’ve been talking about geometry and now I’m diving into psychology. But, everything around us, nature itself, is based on mathematical concepts. How we react to those concepts is based on psychology. With our art, we are striving to replicate both the math and psychology that gives you that breathless moment as you walk, or drive, through a forest, stand on a mountaintop, etc.

So, the Law of Continuity means that your eye will always follow the path of least resistance. Certain visual elements will automatically drop away if they are not needed. As artists, we want to use the arabesque to weave together foreground and background elements. Look for items in the landscape: clouds, lines in the ground, tree branches, etc. If you can’t find a curve, but you are shooting with a model, have the model create the curve with their body or clothing.

There are two other concepts that we need to cover.

Negative space is, well, negative. More accurately, it’s the empty space around your subject. You can use it to create desolation and/or aloneness. It works best with a GAC and a subject that is relatively apparent.

Breathing room is top to bottom, or edge to edge, balance within the image along with your sense of gravity and boundaries. Those boundaries can be the horizon or the edge of the frame. You want to avoid compressing your subject along the edges. This is best illustrated with portraits.

If your subject is looking, or moving, to the right, don’t mash them against the left edge of your image. This creates a sense of confinement, which might be useful, that doesn’t allow you to see where they are going. Your subject’s direction is a leading line. Depending on your vision of the image, scoot them toward the center or even over to the right 1/3 of the frame. Now, you’ve given them space and expanded what the viewer perceives in the image. What are they looking at? What are they moving towards?

Ready for the rules of composition? Here a few of the mostly widely used.
  • Rule of Thirds: This relates to the definition of eyes above and many cameras now overlay this either within the viewfinder or on the LCD at the back of the camera. This is nothing more than a 3x3 grid that you can use to organize elements within your images. It helps you avoid putting your subject smack dab in the middle every time.
  • Leading Lines: This should be fairly self explanatory. This occurs when you line up your image with lines that draw your eye to a specific place. A road. A mountain trail. Cables. Tire tracks. Buildings.
  • Golden Triangles: This is similar to the Rule of Thirds except we use triangles instead of a grid. With this, we split the image with a diagonal from lower left to top right. This is known as a Baroque diagonal. More on that below. From that diagonal, we put in two reciprocals from the top left to the diagonal and from the bottom right to the diagonal. This can be used to create visual tension in the image or much more subtly as a leading line.
  • Golden Ratio: I’ll call this the Rule of Thirds on steroids. Instead of a grid, the image is split into a series of successively smaller squares. The squares are then linked by a curve called the Fibonacci Spiral. The spiral is a leading line that provides a visual flow to the image.
What we want to try and do is take these rules and combine them with the other concepts I spoke about earlier. Using the GAC with any of these is the easiest and most straightforward. But, what happens if use the GAC, with an arabesque or leading lines, with the rule of thirds? We start giving the viewer a flow to follow. Something that draws them into the image. Something that makes them linger and study. That is the goal. You can test that out by going to the art museum and taking your time. Certain paintings will make you stop. Why? Study the lines. Study the light. Take that and use it in your photographs.

Are there other ways to construct a pleasing composition compared to what I have talked about here? Totally. I could spend days talking about this. You can use patterns. Textures. Shapes. Colors (we’ll get into color theory a little). Shadows (GAC). Combine those with the rules and concepts above and the possibilities are quite large.

The takeaway from this is really rather simple. If you see something that is pleasing to you, that causes a reaction in you, chances are someone else will think and feel the same. What you need to do is deconstruct that feeling. Pull it apart and figure out why it happened. Once you understand the why, you’ll be able to apply it to your own imagery.
 
So, I've gotten behind. I apologize. Day job has had me on the road and underwater. Here's the next lesson. As always, reach out if you have questions.

Lesson 3: The Camera

The first lesson taught us how to see. The second gave us some rules to follow for better compositions. This is the one where we finally pick up a camera and talk a little about exposure.

So, what’s a camera? Whether we are talking about an 8x10 view camera, an old 35mm film camera or a modern digital, cameras are really only made up of two things. A light proof box and some sort of opening to allow light in. This could be as simple as a pinhole or as complicated as a monster 1200mm super telephoto.

There are two controls on the camera that will affect how much light reaches the film. Er, sensor. Shutter and aperture. We’ll talk about shutter first.

There are two types of shutters, leaf and focal plane. A leaf shutter is built into the lens itself and is found in view cameras and some medium format cameras. It is made up of small metal plates, “leaves”, that open and close in the specified amount of time. The advantage of this system is that it is quiet and allows for a higher sync speed when using flashes or strobes.

A focal plane shutter is built into the camera body itself. It is composed of two curtains that form small slit that moves across the sensor. These curtains can either move side to side or top to bottom. This biggest advantage of this system is cost. SLR lenses are far less expensive than a leaf shutter lens. The biggest disadvantage is the sync speed for flash. Most modern DSLRs will only sync to a shutter speed of 1/250. We’ll take more about this later on.

What does the shutter do? It controls the amount of light entering your camera by the amount of time it stays open. This is one aspect of the exposure triangle. If we double the amount of time it stays open, it gives one more “stop” of exposure, or double the amount of light. If we halve the amount time, it’s one stop less or half the light. The term stop is used when we change the exposure by either shutter or aperture.

On my Canons, the shutter speed is on the LCD and denoted by the 60.

Photo Oct 09, 9 56 35 AM.jpg


You will notice that it only shows 60. This means 1/60 of a second. When we reach slow shutters of one second or longer, the LCD displays them as 0”1, 0”2, 0”4, etc. Using 1/60 as an example, one full stop more would be 1/30 and a stop less would be 1/125. A doubling or halving of the amount of light entering the camera.

Old film cameras displayed shutter speeds in full stop increments on a dial. Modern SLRs, whether film or digital, as well as medium format bodies, will display shutter speeds in full, 1/3 or 1/2 stop increments. I keep my Canons, bodies and flashes, in 1/3 increments. Here’s a quick table.

ShutterTable.png


Shutter speed will affect our image in a few different ways. In general, the faster the shutter speed, the more likely we are to have a sharp subject. This is used in situations with lots of light or high speed action such as sports. Slow shutters can be used in low light situations or when you want to give the sense of movement. We can also use a slow shutter with a technique called panning which keeps the subject sharp but blurs the background. The technique is to move the camera in the same direction as your subject while the shutter is open.

I am a huge fan of trying to convey a sense of motion in my images. I use panning a lot but sometimes, especially when doing portraits of kids, I like to run behind them as they run through a park or field. I’ll also use it when doing street photography to try and capture the chaos of a bustling downtown area.

Moving on to aperture.

The aperture, the lens opening, controls the brightness of the light that reaches your sensor. This is the second part of the exposure triangle. Just like the leaf shutter, the aperture is a series of metal blades inside the lens. When it expands, more light is allowed through. When it contracts, less light. The best analogy for aperture is the pupil in your eye.

Aperture is denoted by a number called the f-stop. Here’s an example: f/2.8, f/4, f/5.6, f/8, f/11. The smaller the number, the larger the opening, the more light that gets let in. When we go from 2.8 to 4, we are halving the size of the opening which in turn halves the amount of light coming in to the camera. Sound familiar? It should as it follows the same pattern as shutter speed. We can talk about aperture in full, 1/2 and 1/3 stop increments just like shutter speed.

Here’s a small table to give you an idea.

ApertureTable.png


You may have heard lenses described as either fast or slow. A fast lens is one with a really wide aperture. A lens labeled as f/1.4 would be fast than one at 2.8. The faster the lens, the more expensive it is. Some lenses (zooms) are also labeled as variable aperture. For example, Canon’s 28-135 is labeled as f/3.5-5.6. This means that at 28mm, the lens has a maximum aperture of 3.5 while at the other end, 135mm, it can only get to 5.6. This is a function of lens design and keeps the cost down. Some zooms are constant aperture such as Canon’s 24-70 f/2.8 which holds the maximum 2.8 aperture all the way through the zoom range. Cost and size increase with these types of lenses.

Besides the amount of light, aperture also controls the depth of field. The depth of field is the area from near to far in a scene that is sharp in the photograph. The smaller the aperture, the larger the depth of field becomes. To achieve this sharpness, you will often hear people talking about stopping down there lens. The wider the aperture, the narrower the depth of field. A narrower depth of field allows you to blur out elements in the foreground, background or both. It is a common technique for separating subject from background.

Most relatively modern cameras, either film or digital, will have a depth of field preview button. This is a button located on the camera body near the lens. Pressing it will stop the lens down to the set aperture giving you a “preview” through the viewfinder. This kinda sorta works and experience will give you a better feel.

Older, manual lenses all had a depth of field scale on them. Some SLR lenses still have them. Here’s an example from one of my Canon lenses.

Photo Oct 09, 11 02 52 AM.jpg


The window of the lens shows the focus increments. Under the window, you’ll notice a series of numbers with lines. The numbers are f-stops and the lines indicate the depth of field boundaries. You match the lines up with the focus scale to understand the size of your depth of field. I use this when I street shoot. I will manually focus the lens to somewhere between 8-10 feet then set the f-stop to 5.6. I then know that everything from about 8-12 from the camera will be in focus. It allows me to react faster to scenes without having to wait on the autofocus.

We just talked about 2 parts of the exposure triangle, shutter and aperture. Triangles have 3 parts though. The third piece is ISO which we will cover below. First, I want to go over using shutter and aperture together to create a properly exposed image.

The combination of shutter and aperture is what lets in the “proper” amount of light for a particular scene. Of course, proper is dependent on your creative vision for the scene but we’ll talk about it in general terms.

Once I find a combination that lets in the proper amount of light, I can change one setting as long as make an equivalent change, in the opposite direction, to the other setting. This is called an equivalent exposure. For example, if the setting is f/5.6 at 1/60, I can decrease the aperture to 4 but then I have to increase the shutter to 1/125 to keep the exposure the same. Here’s an analogy.

If we try to fill a one gallon bucket in the sink, it’s going to take a certain amount of time. The determining factors for that time are how wide the faucet is open and how long it is open. If a wide open faucet fills the bucket in 2 seconds, then a half open one will fill it in 4. Either way, the bucket will still only hold one gallon of water.

Your camera is like that bucket. It will only hold one gallon of light. If we try to stuff more light into, the image is overexposed. Not enough light makes it underexposed. If our correct exposure is 2 seconds at f/4 then we get the same exposure with twice the time and half the light, 4 seconds at f/5.6.

Now, the last part of our triangle is ISO. In terms of film, ISO was referred to as the film’s speed. The faster the film speed, the less light you needed but you gained grain during the development process. Grain is not evil. It can be an aesthetic part of the final image. Slow film needed more light but had less grain. Slow ISOs would be films rated at 50 or 100. Faster films are 400 and 800. There are tricks you can play by “pushing” and “pulling” film by using different ISO settings then compensating in the development process. That’s a little beyond what I want to cover here but tons of fun to play with.

In general, ISO is how sensitive your camera will be to light. Lower ISO settings make your camera more sensitive, needing more light, whereas higher ISOs make it less sensitive. Even with digital, higher ISOs will create grain or digital noise. Today’s DSLRs and software limit the noise really well.

How does ISO relate to shutter and aperture? Let’s look at the following information.

ISOTable.png


You can see that we are keeping the aperture constant. By increasing the film speed, we also need to make a corresponding increase (one full stop) in the shutter speed. Could we have kept the shutter speed constant and increase the aperture? Sure thing. We would have gone from 2.8 to 4 to 5.6. However, that would have also changed our depth of field. Again, we need to think about our creative vision and how we want the final image to appear.

With the next lesson, we’ll dive into more detail on exposure. In the meantime, pull out those cameras and experiment with the exposure triangle and get a handle on how each of the three sides affects your final image.
 
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Ok, reorganized those images into a shared album on Google then relinked them. Refresh your browser and let me know if they show up now.
 
The first and next to last still are not, the different charts do. Thanks for checking and fixing!
 
This is why I don't make a very good software engineer anymore. :wth? :headbang

Ok. I deleted the image references and uploaded the files directly here then put those uploaded files into the post. If that still doesn't work, then, I give up. :cool:
 
Cool thread - I'm in!

I've been shooting as a hobbyist since grade school. I've taken classes over the years, but find there is always more to learn - other peoples' experience is priceless.

These days, when I go out on a 2-week DE trip, I usually take ~1000 pictures. They are good pictures, but only a couple are really striking - I want to up the good-to-great ratio.

This is going to be fun!
 
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.

Hopefully, the images show up this time...

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.

zoneSystem.jpg


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.

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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.
 
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