Have you noticed that many photographs taken with snow backgrounds on cloudy days end up looking like this; dark and dingy with gray snow and an even darker subject?If you are shooting your camera in auto mode this will be the typical result. Without going into all of the technical details the solution is to compensate the exposure. For this you will need to change modes to one of the creative ones such as AV (aperture priority) of TV (shutter priority) or switch to the manual mode and then compensate the exposure allowing more light to expose the digital sensor.
This dark shot of a Tufted Titmouse was made on AV with +.3 stop of compensation
With a compensation setting of +1.3 this image of an American Tree Sparrow is considerably improved.
A little tweaking of the image in Photoshop produced a reasonably acceptable photograph but in hindsight I should have compensated more, possibly as much as a full 2 steps.
Properly exposing a subject on a snow background is not an easy task so it’s always best to shoot some trial shots checking the results on the camera’s LCD often and compensating as needed to end up with a nicely exposed subject with white snow that retains it's detail.
7 comments:
Great tips.Thanks.
Blessings,Ruth
You are doingwell in the snow Coy. If there is one thing this wintr is doing it is giving us plenty of chance to practice. I always shoot with my LCD set to show blinkies for the blown highlights and on manual mode only.
Great job with the crow, black on white is very difficult. I remember shooting a black bear in the snow the first time. I kept complaining that I could not get the shot right until the guy with me said just shut up and shoot it is black and white and you will never record it as you see it.
Stay warm and keep this sun shinning we are having this week.
Very nice. The second Sparrow shot is really good. Snow always provides challenges.
Hi Coy,
Yeh, I very often have to correct for the exposure over here. you can imagine that ;-) Iceland can be very drak sometime and the contrast can be big...
Vert interesting Coy... I really need to get the hang of some of techniques my camera as...
Your bird shots are very good.. I did like the ones in flight...
All the very best to you and yours.
Salty: You are always so generous with your advice.
Hi Coy. Nice shots of that little birdy in the snow. I had several shots that turned out just like your example. I had a difficult time at first since I never get to shoot in the snow.. sand, ocean, waves, blue sky but no snow.. It is a different way to set up the camera for sure.. :) Hope all is well.. Aloha, Renee :)
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