Friday Photography Tips #3 - Exposure
Australian Sunrise Silhouette - Thomas David Kavanagh
Let me start this weeks tip by saying something that you won’t here enough in your journey into photography “there is nothing wrong with having your camera set to automatic”. If you just want to take interesting pictures and have a good eye for composition, that little box in your hands is going to get it right nearly all of the time.
There are some situations however, where these technological wonders can make mistakes. Very bright scenes such as snow can cause the camera to underexpose the image, turning people into silhouettes and make the snow itself look dull. In scenes with a lot of darkness the camera can overcompensate for shadows and overexpose the image, making faces too bright and revealing details in the shadows you probably don’t want.
1. Auto Exposure Lock (AEL)
Almost all cameras will include a function that lets you lock the exposure value. This allows you to set your exposure based on what is in the frame and then recompose before you take your shot. So in a portrait situation you would fill the frame with the person’s face, press the AEL button to lock the exposure, before you recompose your frame and take the shot. While other elements of the photo may be too bright or too dark, the face is exposed correctly.
In the image above the exposure was set to capture the snow outside and then reframed inside an underpass. The cameras automatic mode would have tried to brighten the tunnel and dramatically overexpose the world of snow outside.
2. Exposure Compensation (+/-)
Another method that allows you to take more control of exposure is to use Exposure Compensation to brighten or darken your image. This function varies between cameras, it’s sometimes a dedicated dial, often on DSLRs you need to hold down a +/- button while you move a dial left and right. On smartphones it is achieved by sliding your finger up or down next to a little sun or bulb icon. The video below shows a backlit scene that is made brighter on an iPhone by setting focus and then sliding upwards to make the subjects less dark.
Exposure compensation is a great way of taking more creative shots without having to worry about all of the technical settings of your camera. The shot below is of O'Brien's Tower next to the Cliffs of Moher, Ireland. The scene has been intentionally underexposed in order to darken the bright daylight sky and get more detail from the clouds, the result also captures figures walking around the tower in silhouette.
3. Create Silhouette
My favourite way to practice these techniques is to use shadow. While photography literally means “drawing with light”, what makes a photograph interesting is often what you don’t see. Use AEL or Exposure Compensation to reduce the brightness of your image and see what figures and shapes you can capture. The scene below shows the beautiful streets of Newcastle, full of shadows from the setting sun.
There are many ways to take more creative control of your camera while not having to worry about going ‘full manual’. I will explore more of these over the coming weeks, hope you found it useful.
Happy Friday,
Tom
