Tag: dramatic light

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Become a Better Photographer by Exposing to the Right

Sun creeps down the mountains west of the Cotton Ball Basin, Death Valley National Park

Read old photography books and you’ll find instruction on over or under exposing your camera in order to “fool” your camera into capturing the scene on film as it was in real life. Cameras are designed to render every scene at an average of middle gray, which may not be suitable for all scenes. For example, snow or beach scenes often need to be over exposed by a couple of stops or else the camera will expose the snow or sand darker than it appears in real life, giving a muddy appearance to a naturally bright scene. The same is true for naturally dark scenes. For example, if a black cat fills most of your frame, you should underexpose or else the camera will try to expose the cat at middle gray, blowing out your highlights.

However, this is not necessarily true with digital photography. As you are learning the craft of digital photography, once you graduate from shooting jpeg images to RAW images, you should learn how to “expose to the right”.
In a nutshell, this means overexposing the shot as much as possible without blowing out (or clipping) your highlights. This term is named after the fact that when overexposing, the tones captured by the camera move to the right part of the histogram that represents the possible tonal range the camera’s sensor can capture.

The principal behind this technique is simple – digital sensors capture far more digital information on the right side of the histogram (the brightest part of the image), than the left side of the histogram (the darkest part of the image). In other words, images with lots of bright, detailed areas take up more disk space (and contain more digital information) than images with dark features.

Let’s assume for example your camera’s digital sensor can capture 8 stops of light across 4096 tonal levels (in reality, dynamic range varies from sensor to sensor). The more tonal levels a sensor can capture, the smoother the transition between light and dark in the resulting photo. The f-stop measurement is logarithmic in nature, meaning a stop will capture twice as much light as one stop darker. That means using the example distribution above of 4096 tonal levels across 8 stops of light, the brightest stop will capture 2048 tonal levels while the darkest will capture only 32. There is much more digital information needed to capture the many tonal levels of the brightest stop than the few tonal levels of the darkest stop.

You’ve likely seen the results of this lack of digital information when trying to brighten an image in post processing. As you increase the exposure slider in Lightroom, for example, you’ll see lots of digital noise appear in the dark spots of the image. If, on the other hand, you need to make an image darker in post processing, no digital noise is added because you already had all that extra digital information in the brighter image. Therefore, the goal of exposing to the right is to capture the maximum amount of digital information as possible in the field, so that you have more options with that image in post processing.

Here are some examples:

In the image of the Grand Tetons above, I set my camera’s exposure compensation to +1 1/3 stops, even though it looked terrible on the back of my camera. By trusting the core principals of this technique and relying on my experience, I knew that once I post processed the RAW file in Lightroom, I could really make the image sing. Here is the result:

A fog bank moves in front of the Grand Tetons as the rising sun illuminates the sheer peaks, Grand Teton National Park

I corrected the photo in post processing by setting the black point to the left most side of the histogram. This evened out the tones across the entire histogram, adding a lot more contrast back into the photo. Secondly, I dropped the exposure slider down by about 1 stop. This corrected for the overexposure I made in the field. The real benefits can be seen when blowing this image up to inspect it for printing. The shadows are smooth and detailed – more so than if I shot at the correct exposure in the field.

The second example is from Death Valley National Park. Here again I set the exposure compensation on the camera to 1 2/3 stops lighter than the sensor would normally expose the scene. Similar to the brightness of the fog in the Tetons example, all of the white salt in this image required an overexposure so as not to get a middle gray result.

In the field, I kept raising my exposure compensation until I saw the white “blinkies” (overexposure warning) on the resulting image, indicating some parts of the scene were blown out. This meant that these parts of the image no longer contained any detail, and would render a pure white. There is no recovery from blown out white, no matter how much post processing you do, so I lowered the exposure compensation by 1/3 of a stop until the blinkies were no longer showing.

Sun creeps down the mountains west of the Cotton Ball Basin, Death Valley National Park
Sun creeps down the mountains west of the Cotton Ball Basin, Death Valley National Park

The processing steps were the same as the first image – set the black point to add contrast, and lower the exposure slider until the image looked correct on a calibrated monitor.

How to expose to the right

  1. Always shoot RAW! If you aren’t shooting RAW, you are already throwing away digital information, and letting robots process your images.
  2. Turn on the histogram for your camera. Make sure that every image viewed on the rear LCD shows a histogram, which you can use to judge the overall lightness and darkness of the image.
  3. Turn on the overexposure warning. On Cannon cameras, this the “blinkie” display. Any overexposed portions of your image will flash white, letting you quickly know that you need to lower the exposure compensation.
  4. Set the camera to evaluative metering. This means the camera’s light meter will use the entire scene to evaluate the exposure. I shoot 100% of my images in this mode, and I’ve learned my camera’s metering characteristics well enough to set the exposure compensation correctly for different light and dark scenes.
  5. Shoot a couple of test shots, making sure you overexpose the maximum amount without the overexposure warning appearing in the resulting image.
  6. In post processing, correct the exposure by setting the black point. In Lightroom, this means lowering the “Blacks” slider until there are values to the left most side of the histogram. This stretches the image values across the entire histogram, increasing contrast.
  7. Finally, lower the overall Exposure slider if the image is still too bright.
  8. Print and enjoy! Congratulations, you’ve just used your camera’s sensor to its maximum, gathering the highest possible amount of digital information from the scene.

My final example is also from Death Valley National Park, this time evening light on the Mesquite Dune field. When I overexposed this scene, I lost almost all contrast in the resulting image. However, I captured a ton of clean detail in the shadows of the dunes. This detail is especially important in this image, because the shadow patterns is the main foreground element, and having any digital noise here would ruin the image.

The Mesquite Dunes stretch across the valley just north of Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley National Park
The Mesquite Dunes stretch across the valley just north of Stovepipe Wells, Death Valley National Park

In the final image I was able to add back all the contrast that was in the real scene, and ensure I kept all my shadows smooth and noise free. Practicing this technique a few times will make it a natural part of your workflow. If you have any questions about this process, drop me a comment below, or shoot me a message through my website.

Gear I used to create the photos in this post:

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Yosemite’s Natural Fire Fall

For only a few days a year, the setting sun lights up the seasonal horsetail falls, cascading down the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

A couple of weekends ago, I had the opportunity to witness one of nature’s most spectacular light phenomenons. For only a few days of only some years, a seasonal waterfall in Yosemite National Park glows like lava as it catches the last rays of waning sunlight. I had long wanted to witness this event in person, but timing or weather had thus far made it impossible. Luckily, my good friend Steve was on the ball, and invited me along. He had already taken care of all the logistics (thank you Steve!) and all I had to do was pack for snow and show up.

Snow covers the floor of Yosemite Valley after a winter storm.
Snow covers the floor of Yosemite Valley after a winter storm.

After a morning drive to Yosemite from the San Francisco Bay Area, we soon found ourselves in one of the most beautiful valleys on Earth. A recent storm had dropped several feet of snow on the ground and frosted the landscape, accentuating Yosemite Valley in all it wintry glory.

Snow covers the floor of Yosemite Valley after a winter storm.
Snow covers the floor of Yosemite Valley after a winter storm.

As I often do with grand vistas, I not only captured the standard landscape shots, but also used my telephoto lens to find scenes within the scene. Switching to my 70-200mm allowed me to isolate Bridalveil Falls cascading down icy cliffs.

Bridalveil Falls forms an icy sheen on the rocks below, Yosemite National Park, CA.
Bridalveil Falls forms an icy sheen on the rocks below, Yosemite National Park, CA.

We stopped off at the Bridalveil Falls trail and scrambled up the slippery path to the base of the falls. Here it became a frigid dance of setting up a shot on the tripod, wiping the icy spray that had accumulated on the lens, and quickly firing a shot. Many times the same shot had to be repeated due to poor wiping skills. Being able to immediately review each shot on the back of the camera was essential for success. With deep respect, I thought of the many photography legends who likely stood in this very spot using much more challenging gear.

Yosemite Falls is reflected in the calm water below, Yosemite National Park, CA.
Yosemite Falls is reflected in the calm water below, Yosemite National Park, CA.

Half Dome towers above Yosemite Valley in winter.
Half Dome towers above Yosemite Valley in winter.

Throughout midday, we were able to capture some of the valley’s most famous icons, dusted in powdery snow.

Finally it was time to prepare for the main event. Many parking lots in Yosemite Valley were closed due to the several feet of snow on the ground. We parked at the closest lot and then snowshoed about a mile to the principal location at which the fire falls phenomenon could be viewed. We set up cameras and tripods at around 2pm, and waited until sunset, which we wouldn’t see for another three and a half hours (yes, landscape photography requires patience!).

For only a few days a year, the setting sun lights up the seasonal horsetail falls, cascading down the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
For only a few days a year, the setting sun lights up the seasonal horsetail falls, cascading down the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

Finally, just after 5pm, Horsetail Falls came to life. Starting with an intense yellow, the falls turned to orange lava over the course of ten minutes.

The story of the original Yosemite “fire falls” goes back to the early years of the National Park Service, at a time when it was struggling to define the meaning of “attraction” for park visitors.  One popular sentiment of the day was that the parks had to entertain visitors, much in the way a circus would entertain audiences through spectacle.   As much of the nation was still rural, the idea of simply having access to wilderness was not as precious as today.

For example, when black bears began to raid the poorly maintained Yosemite Valley dump where all food scraps would end up, the first thought was not the safety of the wild bears. Instead of building proper barricades to prevent the bears from habituating to human food, the park service built bleachers around the dump so that visitors could watch the action.  Another such misstep was the nightly building of a large bonfire at the top of Glacier Point.  As the fire burned down, the embers were shoveled off the cliff, creating a “fire fall” to wow the crowd below in Curry Village. Thankfully this practice was eliminated in the early 1960s. Little did people realize that nature was already providing a much more spectacular display of its own.

For only a few days a year, the setting sun lights up the seasonal horsetail falls, cascading down the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
For only a few days a year, the setting sun lights up the seasonal horsetail falls, cascading down the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

In 1973, photographer Galen Rowel was coming back from a climb in the valley when he looked up and saw a stunning light display against the shadowed backdrop of El Capitan.  Amazed at what he saw, he rushed to photograph it, only to see the light disappear before his eyes.  Although he didn’t know if he’d ever see something like that again, the next night he was prepared.  Sure enough, around the same time of day, Horsetail Falls (a seasonal waterfall that only flows with the proper amount of snow melt) lit up like a beacon.  He quickly composed an image that would become famous, and introduced the world to this amazing natural “fire fall”, which is now photographed by hundreds of photographers annually.

For only a few days a year, the setting sun lights up the seasonal horsetail falls, cascading down the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.
For only a few days a year, the setting sun lights up the seasonal horsetail falls, cascading down the sheer face of El Capitan in Yosemite National Park.

What Galen Rowel was seeing was the setting sun striking only Horsetail Falls, isolating it against the dark cliffs of El Capitan.  There is only about 10 minutes per day where this contrast can be seen, turning the water a reddish orange just before the sun dips over the horizon.  In addition, this perfect sun angle that is required to light the falls but not the cliff only happens twice a year for a few days at a time. And only in late February is there a chance that Horsetail Falls is actually flowing.  This explains why this natural “fire fall” was such a rare occurrence before anybody knew to look for it.

I was overjoyed to finally witness and photograph this phenomenon for myself.

Gear I used to create the photos in this post:

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Sunrise Sunset, Hawaiian Style

Okay, so I’m REALLY behind on my photo editing. I try to keep up to date with important photo shoots, but that often means that my less important photos fall into my backlog for later processing. Here is a set of images I shot in Kauai in 2013. Like I said, I am very behind!

Clouds billow over the water at sunset, Kauai, Hawaii
Clouds billow over the water at sunset, Kauai, Hawaii

Often when I’m shooting landscapes, I create images that has a foreground, middle ground and background, to create depth and lead the viewers eye into the frame. However when I was in Hawaii, I found myself simplifying ocean images into nothing but clouds, colors and water. These images are really all about the colors and texture of the clouds, and most are shot with longer lenses.

Pastels color the northern sky at sunrise, Kauai, Hawaii
Pastels color the northern sky at sunrise, Kauai, Hawaii

While I was there, I had a mixture of dramatic sunrises and sunsets. As I was situated on the north shore of the island most of the time, I had similar side-lighting on each end of the day.

Clouds billow over the water at sunset, Kauai, Hawaii
Clouds billow over the water at sunset, Kauai, Hawaii

However, sunrise gave me the most dramatic clouds and lighting. When shooting into the rising sun, I used silhouetted tree tops to give a sense of scale.

Dramatic shadows play across the thick clouds at sunrise, Kauai, Hawaii
Dramatic shadows play across the thick clouds at sunrise, Kauai, Hawaii

Palm trees are silhouetted by sunrise clouds, Kauai, Hawaii.
Palm trees are silhouetted by sunrise clouds, Kauai, Hawaii.

And when appropriate, I included a bit of shoreline to the east and west, depending on sunrise or sunset.

Clouds to the east light up over Kauai's north shore at sunrise
Clouds to the east light up over Kauai’s north shore at sunrise

The sun sets behind the northern cliffs of the Napali coast, Hanalei Bay, Kauai
The sun sets behind the northern cliffs of the Napali coast, Hanalei Bay, Kauai

Overall, the colors and lighting of the Kauai sea were spectacular enough to hold their own without a strong foreground. When seen together, they paint a picture of the drama that can play out between light, clouds and ocean.

Copyright 2017 Hank Christensen