Monday 21 November 2011

Dealing with crappy light

I won't ask for forgiveness over the title of today's post; its a subject that all photographers will have to deal with at some point, and something that plagues me being a predominately outdoors photographer. Perfect light is all well and good but as I've said before, we don't all have time to hang around for it so were forced to make the most of what we have.

Two shoots in recent days have been prime examples of this; both were for the fly fishing mag I shoot for, Total FlyFisher, and both threw up two kinds of 'crapness' that really do test you when you want to get really striking images.

The first shoot was at Loynton fishery in Staffordshire. Conditions were okay but not great - ISO 800 and 1/80th @ f/5 was a pretty good exposure on the day - thanks to cloud cover that didn't really disperse until well past midday. But more importantly, when the sun did start to break through it didn't do it with any force so it was one of those skies that is all burnt out but with some remaining cloud cover. I hate it when it's like this, simply because the exposure difference between shadow and highlight is so massive, most cameras just go into meltdown because it's hard to know where the exposure should be. Expose for the highlights but risk dense shadows that won't recover well at high ISOs? Sod the highlights and just go for decent tones in foliage and what matters, the fishing? I opted for the latter on the majority of shots but just couldn't get anything striking shooting 'normally' (i.e from eye level to the subject) so I decided to look at silhouettes.

I rarely do silhouettes - it's just something I think can work with identifiable shapes and forms - but in fishing, we're often surrounded by trees and bushes and the shapes of the angler start to get lost. But shooting from below into the sky is a different mater as you can see:


Yes, the flora is in shot but it's thrown out-of-focus by a wide aperture enough to lift the angler. But it's the sky that makes it in my opinion. Gone is that burnt-out look when exposing for shadows; underexposing by two stops gives the sky texture and tonal range and by playing with white balance, it's easy to create that dusk look even when it's two in the afternoon.

I'm happy with this and from this point on, despite the light going even worse, I knew I had something different to back to the office with.

The second shoot was a totally different prospect in that thick fog seems to have descended wherever I go and Toft Newton reservoir in Lincolnshire was no exception.

All day, and I mean all day, there was fog that killed contrast and gave everything a monochromatic feel. That in itself is no bad thing (the monochrome look that is) but the general flatness of light on what is a featureless concrete bowl means there's very little to put action into the periods of downtime between fish.

I've been looking at all my old snowboarding magazines lately (it's winter so I have the bug) and one mag in particular, Whitelines, features really good photography that plays on out-of-focus foreground interest. This is something I do on a regular basis with long zooms but on wide lenses I often neglect this form of shooting. However, when you have little or no major features you have to look at the little details around you and thankfully, the reservoir has this concrete 'lip' running around it's banks that I thought may work. Of course, this is more of a scenic view than anything instructional but it makes a change for me to take this kind of sot than just reverting to 200mm and f/4 to bring the angler out off a foreshortened background.


Not sure about the processing at this minute - the vignette might be a bit heavy-handed for some - but in terms of areas to lay text and panels, there are plenty of options here that designers will be grateful for. A contrast boost has given it some much-needed punch, even if the sky is nonexistent. Plus, and this is a big thing for me as a magazine photographer, both shots are framed so they offer plenty of space away from the gutter (where the fold is). The second shot in particular means there's lots of space on the left that can have copy overlaid and even the sky will take a title and/or standfirst.

Of course, there's much more of this weather to come so I'll have to follow my own advice for some time yet, but these past few days have got me thinking about not just relying on the obvious. Fingers crossed for blue skies though :)

1 comment:

  1. Sweet shots! I love the silhouette one. Followed your page; hope you'd visit my page, too (I just started out on the page so it might appear barren LOL) and follow me as well.

    Saw a link at Flickr, glad to have come across this page!

    Keep up the awesome shots and great stories!

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