ACHIEVING GREAT OUTDOOR IMAGES

By David Gafney

        The Sauk River Valley viewed from the Pacific Crest Trail in Washington’s Glacier Peak Wilderness (#PC0035).  

PART 7 - Some Lighting and Exposure Tips  

      Life is a little easier these days.  Light meters once had to be purchased and carried separately, while now they are built in and “through-the-lens.”  Certainly, during the time of the landscape masters such as Ansel Adams, cameras didn’t have such convenient features as “center-weighted,” “spot,” or “matrix” metering (where the camera’s metering system reads from a number of nonrandom points placed throughout the field of view). Modern 35 mm cameras are truly marvels of the hi-tech revolution.  Despite this there are times when you may wish to veer away from the exposure settings (f-stop and shutter speed) that are suggested by your camera’s metering system.  At such times you may want to purposely underexpose or overexpose a little.  Lets explore a few tricks of the trade in lighting and exposure.

      The section of the Pacific Crest Trail between Stevens Pass, Washington and the northern terminus of the trail on the Canadian border involves a three-week jaunt through a series of huge federal wilderness areas including the half-million acre Glacier Peak Wilderness and North Cascades National Park.  It is a land of old growth forests, snow-clad peaks, flower-filled meadows and wild rivers. The views are breathtaking and the photographic opportunities unlimited!  

 

  Right: maple leaf on forest floor shot from Appalachian Trail, Maine (#AT0042);  Left: Eaton’s penstemon photographed in the Pine Valley Mountains, Utah (#NP0036).

[Tip # 46]  Underexpose for Stronger Colors

     The brilliant colors of wildflowers, the rich greens or an eastern forest, the deep browns and grays of a weathered barn, or the vivid blue of a western sky especially contrasted against colorful desert sandstones and shales - can all be richly enhanced by purposely underexposing by one quantum of light.  You do this by “stopping down” your aperture through shooting at the next highest f-stop or, in the alternative, by decreasing the shutter speed by one click (i.e. when your meter instructs you to shoot at 1/60th second, shoot at 1/125th).  Does this always have the desired effect?  Of course not.  There will be times when such photos will come back underexposed.  That’s why it is always wise, if you have a view or subject that excites you, to bracket.

     Some professionals set the ISO reading on their cameras so as to consistently underexpose.  For example, shooting Kodachrome 64 at the next highest value (ISO 80), will underexpose by the equivalent of one f-stop.

     While slightly underexposing can bring forth the rich colors of nature, be careful not to over do it.  If you are using a film known for its deep color saturation such as Fuji Velvia,  and if you are also using a polarizing filter - adding the further color enhancement of purposeful underexposure may give a result that simply does not look like a legitimate reproduction of reality.  For this reason, I do not tend to use the ISO method mentioned above - I simply bracket by shooting at the suggested exposure and then shooting at the next highest f-stop.  

      In each of the images above purposeful underexposure was used in an attempt to enhance the rich color of the subjects.  The maple leaves were shot while I was hiking the One-hundred-mile Wilderness - which is the northernmost segment of the Appalachian Trail - the one hundred mile section between the village of Monson, Maine and the base of Mt. Katahdin. To take this shot, I used the macro mode on my 70-300 mm Sigma zoom telephoto lens.   Dew droplets cling to the bottom, and not the top of maple leaves.  It is the leaf bottom however that tends to have more subtle and less dramatic autumn coloration.  Perhaps the goal for capturing the beauty of the eastern forest floor in October is to include one of each - a maple leaf showing its richly colored surface and one overturned and covered with dew droplets.   The red blossoms of Eaton’s penstemon were growing in the Pine Valley Mountains, an isolated and beautiful range that rises from the redrock country of southwestern Utah.  This image was shot with  the use of close-up filters attached to a normal (50 mm) lens (See Tip #36).  

Common and snowy egrets, Everglades National Park, Florida (#WF0011)

[Tip # 47]  Underexpose for Dramatic Effect

     When it comes to lighting and exposure, there will be many times when you will not want to do what your camera is telling you to do.  I spent a winter once working as a canoe guide and naturalist in an outdoor center in the Everglades.  So much more than a “river of grass,” Everglades National Park is a place where two inches of elevational gain can make a world of difference: from cypress swamp to longleaf pine forest; from sawgrass prairie to tropical “hammock.”  It is a place where it is easy to become lost in a million-acre mangrove maze of rivers, sloughs and lakes.  Once, I came upon a large number of common and snowy egrets in one of these lakes and was mesmerized by the almost surreal reflections they casts in the murky water.  I decided to experiment by shooting at one and then two f-stops below what my camera was telling me to shoot at.  By purposely underexposing the film, the dark water became black – enhancing the reflection of the egrets and allowing for a far more dramatic image than would have resulted had I shot at the f-stop the camera was suggesting.

Monument Valley, Great Barrington, Massachusetts (#BK0027)

[Tip # 48] Overexpose Bright Winter Scenes  

     I always have a problem with this one, for it goes against my natural instincts.  Typically, when I decide to shoot at an exposure different from that suggested by my camera’s TTL metering system, it is in the direction of underexposing for purposes of enhancing color saturation or, as mentioned above, for the purpose of creating a dramatic effect.  Additionally, when faced with a snow covered landscape on a bright, sunny winter’s day, my intuition tells me to underexpose - or reduce the amount of light reaching the film and thereby compensate for the excessive amount of light reflected from the bright landscape.  But “stopping down” is exactly what you should not do at such times.  When conditions are particularly bright, the degree of brightness can be so strong as to overwhelm the capabilities of your camera’s metering system - your TTL system gets a little “mixed up in the head” so to speak.  The end result is that it misreads and underexposes the snowy landscape.  The snow will take on a shade of blue or gray that is not an accurate reflection of the scene. 

      Sometimes, I am not displeased with this result, for while not perfectly reflecting the actual wintry landscape, such images can have a more subdued “feel” to them which can be appealing.  Often, however, they just appear underexposed.  For this reason, it is wise to bracket by “opening up” and shooting the snowy scene at one f-stop lower than what your metering system is telling you to shoot at (shoot at f/11 when your TTL system tells you to shoot at f/16).  Hopefully, this will compensate for the “trick” that Old Man Winter likes to play on TTL metering systems.

      The image above was shot at one f-stop below what my camera was suggesting (shot at f/11 rather than the suggested f/16).  It was shot in Monument Valley not far from where I live in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts. The effect of “too much light” was further reduced through the use of a circular polarizing filter

      For whatever reason, I tend not to be greatly inspired on sunny winter days.  I prefer overcast days for shooting winter landscapes.  In my mind, such days somehow better reflect the bucolic beauty of rural New England.  In the image below, the Congregational church in the village of Tyringham, Massachusetts was photographed from near the Appalachian Trail.  The photograph was taken at the f-stop and shutter speed suggested by my TTL metering system.

The village of Tyringham in the Berkshire Hills of western Massachusetts (#BK0028)

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Hiker in the backcountry of Zion National Park, Utah (#NP0037).

[Tip # 49] Backlighting and Silhouetting 

     In days of old when you purchased a new roll of film or a camera, the instructions that came with it would tell you to always take pictures with the sun directly behind you.  This is an instruction that is truly worth ignoring.  In the present literature on nature photography there is a great deal of discussion on back lighting and side lighting.  Those old instructions should have read "sometimes take pictures with the sun behind you, sometimes with the sun at a 90 degree angle to you (to maximize the effect of your polarizing filter for example) and sometimes backlight."  To backlight, shoot when the sun is behind your subject, rather than behind you.

     Through backlighting, a dramatic effect can be achieved by partially hiding the sun behind the subject.  If your exposure is correct (not an easy call for slight movement of the camera can radically change the amount of light striking the film - another reason to liberally bracket) backlighting will create a silhouette of your subject.  The image above has taken on special significance for me.  It is of a close friend, John Ethridge, posing on a hoodoo in the backcountry of Zion National Park, Utah.  John was a seasonal ranger at Zion who died as a result of a hiking accident in 1990.

 

Hobblebush leaves, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Tennessee (#AT0043)

[Tip # 50]  Backlighting - Highlight Through Background Shadows 

     Use background shadows to highlight your subject.  This has maximum effect when the backlit subject is translucent such as the hobblebush leaves above photographed along a woodland trail in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  With such a subject, sunlight is absorbed by the autumn leaves rather then reflected.  The forest canopy shades the background forest.  Using center weighted metering the TTL metering system reads off the leaves and in so doing underexposes the shaded background.  This is an effective way to dramatically "highlight" the subject and can make colorful autumn leaves still hanging on the tree appear to glow.

  Sunset from the Vantana Wilderness overlooking California’s Big Sur Coast (#NP0026)

Epilogue: Thanks for taking this journey with me through the world of wilderness and landscape photography.  I hope that these tips will bring fruitful results in your photographic efforts.  If you wish to drop me a note with comments and suggestions, or if you would like to simply discuss outdoor photography, our national parks and public lands or the struggle to preserve what remains of our wild lands, please visit Dave Gafney’s Wilderness Nomad’s Blog at:  http://www.gafneyphoto.com/blog/  

© 50 Tips to Great Outdoor Photography by David Gafney, 2010

 

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© 50 Tips to Great Outdoor Images by David Gafney, 2010