This post may fall in the category of what you might call ‘mundane.’  It doesn’t have the creative thrill of a new and exciting photograph.  It’s more under the category of ‘Things-I-Should-Do-But-Haven’t-Gotten-Around-To-Them-Yet.”  Actually, this is really under the category of “Making-My-Life-Easier.”  So, what is this all about?

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One of the things that we landscape photographers pay a lot of attention to is light.  In fact, it is my belief that the study of landscape photography is a never ending study of light.  And that’s a good thing because there’s so much to learn.

Now, I must confess – my analytical mind needs to break things down to help my creative mind better recognize and capitalize on great light.  So get ready ‘cause here come a series of blog posts on light.

What Color Is a Cloud?

The first thing I want to look at is Color.  Now, we’re all pretty familiar with red, green and blue, even cyan, magenta and yellow.  I don’t want to talk about color in that way.  We could discuss the color wheel and that would be informative but, well, not all that exciting.  I’d like to kick this off by asking a simple question…

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The post I wrote on Expose to the Right about a year ago is one of the most popular on this blog.  I wrote it after a workshop when I suggested this technique and one of the participants complained the photographs looked horrible.  I still use this technique but my workflow in Lightroom continues to evolve.

Recall that Expose to the Right means to overexpose your image so that the histogram shifts toward the right edge.  It is important not to overexpose so much that you introduce highlight clipping.  I like to have a histogram that is positioned a little to the right of center as seen here.  When you expose to the right you can end up with an image that is overexposed by anywhere from 1/3 to a stop or two, depending on the situation.

In the first post I suggested that you can ‘normalize’ the exposure in Lightroom with the Exposure adjustment.  If you overexposed by a stop you can start by decreasing Exposure adjustment in Lightroom by one stop.  This will have the effect of moving the histogram back toward the center or even to the left of center.  This gives you an exposure closer to what the camera’s light meter selected.

From there you can continue with your regular workflow.  Here’s an example of some additional adjustments: Blacks to set a black point, Contrast to add interest (contrast is always more interesting than flat) and Brightness to liven it up a little.  There are many adjustments you might perform but these few simple ones serve to illustrate the point.

But another technique would be to take the opposite approach.  Instead of normalizing the exposure, start by setting the black point with the Blacks adjustment.  This has a different effect on the histogram.  Instead of the entire histogram sliding towards the left, the shadow tail is extended without much change in the mid-tones or highlights.  This technique expands the dynamic range of the photograph.

You can further expand the dynamic range by adding contrast.  With both shadow and highlight areas to work on the Contrast adjustment both brightens and further darkens the image.

In practice you can try both techniques.  Just create two virtual images from the original file and apply one technique to one and the other technique to the other.  Often the first few adjustments you make on an image have an influence on the finished photograph.  So compare the two and decide which one you want to continue with.

This is not about whether one technique is better than the other but rather to give you more options when working with the photographs that you have exposed to the right.

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Last night I ran across an example of why we shoot in RAW (not in the RAW – puhleeeze).

Digital SLR cameras and a few point and shoot camera support the RAW file format for our images.  RAW is essentially what the sensor captured – unprocessed, uncompressed, unadulterated.  It takes a bit to get used to but once you do you’ll not go back to JPEG, the other file format.

One of the benefits of RAW is it gives you a lot more flexibility including recovering from poorly exposed images, especially over exposed.  Now, if you’ve read any of my histogram posts (search this blog for Histograms to find them), you know that the single most important thing to avoid as far as exposure is concerned is highlight clipping.  But with RAW you have a chance to recover an overexposed image and turn it into something very acceptable.  It doesn’t always work but sometimes it does.

OK, so I was scanning images in Lightroom last night and ran across this one.  It’s washed out except for the foreground and there is a tremendous amount of highlight clipping in the upper right hand corner.  (I wouldn’t blame you if you stopped reading hear and said, “There’s no way he can do anything with that image.  It’s a mess.”  Which it is.  But humor me and read on.)

By the way, you can click on the images to see them in a larger format.

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There are a couple of things that make a great vacation photograph.  Certainly photographing loved ones in exciting and exotic places is one of the most important.  But there is something else that is very powerful and not that hard – Composition.

There are many facets to composition, far more than can be covered in a brief blog posting.  But come along and I’ll share 10 simple compositional techniques with you that will enhance not only your photography on your vacation but throughout the year.

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It all started with kneeling in the mud.

I was with David Muench, Jerry Dodrill and twelve other eager photographers on a Mountain Light Gallery workshop in May.  We lined up along the bank of the pond just outside Bishop, California and aimed our cameras at magnificent Mt Tom, the dominant peak in the Eastern Sierra crest in this area.

I’d like to take you through the process of making a photograph from the images I captured that morning.

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Good news!  Summer is here!  And we’re thinking “Vacation Time.”  Now, you don’t have to be a professional photographer to figure out that you’re going to take a camera.  So the question becomes, are you going to take your camera that has been sitting around for umpteen  years or use your upcoming vacation as an excuse to buy a new one.  (When it comes to buying camera gear, any excuse will do, at least for some of us.)

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A little over a week ago my new Dell Inspiron 580 arrived at my doorstep.  My wife and daughter finally convinced me to buy a new one.  I think they were getting tired of me storming around the house all grumpy and such when the old on acted up.  Disclaimer:  Computers act up after years of use not because they wear out but because of all the junk you load on them as time goes by that literally clogs the operating system.  So, with a little persuasion from my girls I gave Dell a call.

If your one of those that gets into these things, here’s what I ended up with:

• OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64 bit)
• Processor: Intel Core i% CPU 760 @ 2.80 GHz (it’s a 64 bit quad)
• Memory: 8 GB
• Internal storage: 1 TB
• Display adapter: ATI Radeon HD 5450 (supports dual monitors – VGA, DVI and HDMI) with 1 GB memory)

So that’s the starting point.  And from here on it gets more interesting – not exactly the Chinese curse interesting but kinda-sorta.  I got a good deal on the Dell but it as it turns out I wasn’t even close to being done spending money.

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In this series of articles we’ve been exploring the histogram.  In the first two articles we discussed what it is.  Now we’re looking at different types of histograms and exploring how to work with them both in the field and during the post processing.  If you want to review or catch up, here are the links to the preceding three posts.

Mastering Exposure – Histograms Part 1: Introduction

Mastering Exposure – Histograms Part 2:  A Closer Look

Mastering Exposure – Histograms Part 3: The Rocky Mountain Histogram

In this article I want to discuss my favorite histogram, the Mole Hill histogram.  I like this one because so much can be done with it in the post processing.  Subtle colors and tonalities can be revealed in soft radiant light.  It lends itself to some of the most creative and expressive images.

Read on and we’ll look at what it is, the conditions in which it occurs, how to photograph it and how to work with it in the post processing to reveal the scene in all of its hidden glory.

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I talked to a lot of people at the Joshua Tree Art Festival this past weekend, sharing with them a little tip about getting better photographs from their point and shoot cameras.

In fact, this tip can apply to any digital camera for those times when you don’t want to have to pay close attention to the camera settings.  You may just want to shoot and have the confidence you’ll get decent photographs.

So this tip is very handy in that it will result in pictures with better colors and greater, more interesting contrast.  And it can be achieved in three simple steps.

Camera Mode

Our cameras all have different shooting modes.  Many people I talk to use Auto pretty much all the time.  This is the mode where the camera takes care of everything.  In other words, it makes all the decisions. 

The first simple change is to switch from whatever mode you’re using to P (for Program mode) as illustrated here.  This returns control of some key functions back to you, the photographer.    The camera will still set the aperture and shutter speed based on the light conditions.  But you gain access to some key corrections that will result in better pictures.

Exposure Compensation

The second change is exposure compensation.  This is the technique of either increasing or decreasing the exposure that the camera determined without resorting to setting the exposure manually.  In other words, you can still let the camera determine the exposure (as it does in P mode) but then tell it to decrease the exposure a certain amount.

Not all cameras have this capability but if your camera is one that does there will be a button or dial with this symbol somewhere on the camera.  Or there will be an exposure compensation menu option.  It indicates that you can refine the exposure by increasing or decreasing it.  In other words, it allows you to slightly over expose (or lighten) the image or underexpose (or darken) the image.  Here’s how it works.

The camera determines the exposure using its built in light meter.  It generally does a pretty good job but it has certain limitations.  The exposures it determines may overexpose the image ever so slightly, resulting in pale colors.  So if we slightly underexpose our  photographs they will gain a richness of color that is very pleasing.

I recommend we use –1/2 to –2/3 stop exposure compensation.  That is to say, we tell the camera to decrease the exposure by 1/2 or 2/3’s of a stop.  Your camera will display a scale similar to this one that will show the amount of exposure compensation.  On the minus side, 1 means decreasing the exposure or darkening the image by one stop.  Two means the exposure is decreased and the image is darkened by two stops.  The positive side increases or brightens the image by one and two stops respectively.

If your camera is set up to adjust exposure by half stop increments there will be one dot between the numbers as in this illustration.  If it is set up to adjust exposure by one third stop increments there will be two dots.  I prefer to set my camera to adjust exposure by 1/3 stop increments.  And then I set my exposure compensation to –2/3 stops.

You may need to check your camera’s manual to determine exactly how to set your camera’s exposure increments and how to do exposure compensation.

Auto ISO

The third change is to set your ISO setting on Automatic.  ISO refers to the sensitivity of the camera’s sensor which in turn affects the amount of light required to produce a correct exposure.  The greater the sensitivity, the less light is required.  Increasing the ISO increases the sensor’s sensitivity.  So an ISO of 100 has low sensitivity and requires more light for a correct exposure.  An ISO of 400 has much higher sensitivity and therefore requires much less light for a correct exposure.

Cameras produce the highest quality images at low ISOs.  And when the ISO is set on Auto the camera will automatically select the lowest possible setting to give you the highest quality image in the prevailing light conditions.

As with exposure compensation, you may need to consult your camera’s manual to determine exactly how to do this.

I use these settings myself on my Canon point and shoot (G11), the camera I take with me everywhere I go.  When I’m doing casual shooting or even scouting for ‘serious’ photograph locations I’ll use the G11 configured in this way.  In times like these I don’t want to be focusing on exposure settings, ISO and all the other things I think about when shooting my big Canon.  I want to focus on the image and the compositional possibilities.  And these settings allow me to do that and still capture high quality images.

So, try them for yourself and see if you like them.  Set up your camera in this way and shoot some photographs.  I think you’ll be pleased with the results. 

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