Let’s continue our exploration of seeing the light.
Watch the Foreground
That’s right! We also have to pay attention to how the light is falling on foreground subjects in a scene. Both of these pictures were taken in Mexico at the site of the annual monarch butterfly migration. In the horizontal image, the foreground is overexposed, because that part of the tree was in brighter light than the top of the tree. On site, to the untrained eye, it may not appear that way. In the vertical shot, the exposure is even because the illumination on the tree is even.
Now let’s take a look at seeing another important part of exposure: shadows.
Shadows Add Depth
Shadows add a sense of depth and dimension to a photograph. Without them, pictures tend to look flat – which is not always a bad thing, as illustrated by some of the preceding pictures in this blog, including one of my all-time favorite shots, the image of the Tariano woman.
The pictures here – taken in Upper Antelope Canyon, Arizona; Ponderosa Ranch, Oregon; Old Havana, Cuba; and Croton-on-Hudson, NY – have strong shadow areas that add to the interest of the images.
To record strong shadows without the highlights being washed out, you need to set your exposure for the highlights in the scene, the brightest area of the scene, which you can do with your camera’s exposure lock function.
Rick Sammon
www.ricksammon.com