I have a new blog site…come say hi…

www.bethjenningsblog.com

xx

You’re Invited

Woohoo! Exhibition #2 for 2010…I’m so excited and you’re invited!
Click here to see the complete invitation.

Raves

I love teaming up with other people and businesses who have the same ideals as me.  I’ve raved about Mount Majura Vineyard and more recently I’ve raved even more about The Framing Store…yay, partnerships, we love them!

This event is going to be HUGE!!!!!!! My work will be on display starting on Friday 30th July, 5.30-7pm. It runs all throughout August.  Thursday and Friday nights will be the special nights of the week.  Mount Majura are expecting big interest in their very special, flagship wine called Temperanillo – a Spanish-classic-cool-climate-Canberra-style wine to sample plus lots of other wines too, so those Thurs and Fri nights are the best alternative time to savour the flavour, enjoy the tapas and music and of course my beautiful photographs!!

BJP

I see it also as a great way to get my message out about what BJP stands for: valuing life’s exquisite moments and gifting them to the future, and ‘Bottling Memories’ is the perfect analogy of what I do. You can find out more about capturing your Family Story in 2010, Conquering the Camera Workshops, and about how BJP can help you with  your photographic needs – at work, at play, in nature, in cities and at ceremonies.

Bottom line – I love photography and this will be your time to see why

Something for Everyone

There’ll be a beautifully framed print prize giveaway on the night, as well as, of course, beautiful wines to sample, tapas to taste and live music to get your feet tapping.  Prints will be available for purchase, both framed and unframed and I’ll also be selling gift cards throughout the exhibition.  5% of gift card proceeds will be going to the Autism Aspergers ACT, a cause I am very proud to support. The thing I love most is the versatility and diversity of my artwork – it’s a half and half display of people and places from all over the world….argh and I so love seeing the world, capturing its magic and sharing some of my exquisite moments with you.

RSVP

Not essential, but if you think you’d like to come, then why not let me know?  It just helps a bit with numbers and catering…but no stress if you don’t let us know.  And if you do come, and we haven’t met yet, then please, please come say hi!

Where is it?

You can’t miss it! 314 Majura Road, heading north from the airport it’s on the left hand side, just 15 mins from town.  We love it! A vineyard in the city!

View Larger Map

B

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Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you’ve stopped by. I hope you gained some new information and insights.  I’d love to hear your comments and will reply asap.

You might like to join me on the BJP page over at Facebook, I’ll see you there!

Beth

Thanks to Trish, Nick, Jay, Vanessa, Daniel and Lisa my pilot program of Conquering the Camera is complete.  Everyone gained a lot across the three sessions, and I now have the material and my teaching methods clearly established…so more workshops to follow and more on that soon….so for now, thank you to my lovely participants!

Lights, Camera, Action

Today we covered off what we have learned about assessing light, selecting an ISO and light metering.  Everyone now understands why it’s a dodgy idea to smack their camera on auto…it just doesn’t work. We need to look for a subject that we think is around a midtone grey, meter for that, then take our picture. Sometimes we still need to make some minor adjustments from there. In my example below with Zsofi, her luscious white skin was quite bright, so when we took a midtone meter reading for the whole general area, we found she was a bit too bright for our liking.  So we all reduced our exposure by one stop, and then had this:

Ok, not a very scintillating picture, Z looks a bit bored, but at this stage we’re still just managing our metering process, OK?

The Mug Shot

Everyone has their strong points and weak points, in physical terms.  And let’s face it, when we get our picture taken, we want it to be a GOOD one, our best angle, our best side…you get the drift.  You can control a lot about how the picture turns out in terms of flattery.  Let’s take a look closer at our awesome and willing model Zsofi:

Now, those police line up style mug shots are…shall we say…uninspired…the question is why?

1. Primarily because the camera is dead level with the subject, so this means that equal attention is given to the top of the face, as the bottom. When we talk with people they are generally at equal height to us, so there’s nothing new here in this photo angle to look at compared to what we might normally see in real life.
2. At profile the wonderful and whacky shapes of noses take full flight – I love Z’s roman nose, but for a flattering portrait, it’s not her best feature.  (Don’t worry I’ll put myself in that Roman boat right with her…you’ll never, ever see my profile shot either!).
3. Jaw lines and chins are always squashed in a bit at a standard angle.

Something to notice from the left shot to the right shot is the amount of Zsofi’s almond face we see relative to her hair.  That lovely curve line of her hair on the right hand is starting to show some promise…and her beautful eyes which I think are Zsofi’s best feature.

Changing up the Angles

Now, we get Z to squat down, comfortably, and we stay up above her and shoot down.  This changes the angle.

See how her neck has disappeared, and we don’t have any major chin dramas?
See how we see more of her eyes?
The less extreme turn to 45 degrees means we can see both eyes, and the line of her nose blends in more with her skin tone.
Getting better, she has that beautiful almond shaped face, and we’re starting to bring emphasis to that.

Finally, lovely.  We see more of the hair scooping down Zsofi’s face and makes a lovely line with her pretty jaw.  The line of her eyes is strong and feminine, and her beautiful, soft pale skin is gorgeous against the dark background.  Don’t get me wrong, this is really just a quick and basic line up style mug shot, but new and improved.  The point here is to show that angles can make all the difference to even a basic portrait.

Handy hint #1: Move, move, move! Whilst your subject might be stationary, it doesn’t mean you have to be.  Change it up once you have positioned them, move all the way around them and observe what happens in terms of what you see and what you don’t. Get the angles right so that what you do see, are the subject’s best features.

Handy hint #2: Simplify your background.  Use a small depth of field to make the background soft.  You’ll have nice blobby shapes that sit well behind your subject and don’t compete for the viewers’ attention.

Handy hint #3: Know that you can only do so much in-camera and that the next and equally important part of taking pictures is post production.  All of the pictures you see are blogged with no post production applied except sharpening.  The final image of Zsofi has had about 80 independant decisions applied to it – I’ve added vignetting, black clipping, spot healing, skin softening, localised sharpening, split toning to both the highlights and shadows, localised dodging, and altered the green spectrum.  All post production on this picture of Z was completed in Lightroom 3.

The Adventure Continues

….yes…we did make a start today on Lightroom and all it’s amazing features.  But really, this all forms the next level for Conquering the Camera, or is suitable for one-on-one training.  To make the best pictures, you must conquer your camera, then conquer the light, then conquer post production…and I’m confident that I can see you on your way to any or all of this, as you need it.

Stay tuned.

Thanks Z!

B

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Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you’ve stopped by. I hope you gained some new information and insights.  I’d love to hear your comments and will reply asap.

You might like to join me on the BJP page over at Facebook, I’ll see you there!

Beth

Saturday 17th June
9am to 12 noon
$85

Bookings Close 5pm Friday 16th June

Frustrated that when you go out to photograph a person, you are not really sure what to do?
Wondering how to manage your files and what program to use?

Those exact questions will be answered for you at this coming Saturday’s Conquering the Camera session.

Image #1 – A straight, head and shoulders portrait of lovely Trish. We have soft light on her face, but the camera angle is not flattering.  The file has had no post production work done to it.
Image #2 – Some of Trish’s best features are accentuated and the file has been completely finished in Adobe Lightroom.

I’ve trialled and tested many options, and can now fast track you to managing your workflow based on my experiences.  We’ll cut to the chase, just your questions and my practical insights from years of working as a professional photographer.  It’s participative, and FUN…and it’s my mission that you’ll leave feeling more confident in navigating your way around your pictures.

Handy Hint 1: When photographing a person, identify their strong features and their weak features, as this will then help you decide on what you leave in and what you leave out of the picture.

Handy Hint 2: set your camera to RAW setting, not jpeg. Why? RAW is uncompressed, has all that yummy data ready for processing exactly the way you want, and you can then export the file however you wish: jpeg, TIFF, you name it…with much more control over size output.  Jpeg files have already been processed in-camera (they’re sharpened, more contrasty, and print ready) and are spat out as lossy, compressed files. By ‘lossy’ I mean that any additional post production work applied to the image will then result in a further loss of data, which starts to harm your image quality.

Sign Up
Bookings close Friday 16th July at 5pm

Saturday 17th July 2010
9am to 12 noon
$85 per person or $75 each if you bring a friend
Post the booking form to PO Box 4015 Kingston ACT 2604 or
Call 0450 692 599 to pay by credit card or
Use EFT (details are on the booking form)
I’ll send you the address and what to bring along if you sign up

I’m looking forward to seeing you on your way to conquering your camera…and please tell your friends.

B

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Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you’ve stopped by. I hope you gained some new information and insights.  I’d love to hear your comments and will reply asap.

You might like to join me on the BJP page over at Facebook, I’ll see you there!

Beth

I’m happy to report that I’m now officially an Australian Institute of Professional Photography Council Member and Public Relations Representative for the ACT. I’m looking forward to making a valuable contribution to the ACT division of the AIPP in helping to promote and support professional photographers in this region.

The main reasons that I’m a member of the Institute are so that

a) I have a benchmark to work against in terms of professional image making standards
b) I can network and share knowledge with other like minded photographers in my region and across Australia
c) I am certified as a professional photographer which I achieved through a work assessment by my peers
d) I can proudly present that certification to you, my client, with the intention that this certification will reassure you that you will receive the highest standard of imagery possible

I love photography, and even better that it is a legitimate professional industry in which there’s a network of people out there that share my values.

If you are looking for a professional photographer, I would recommend that you look for this logo:

B

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Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you’ve stopped by. I hope you gained some new information and insights.  I’d love to hear your comments and will reply asap.

You might like to join me on the BJP page over at Facebook, I’ll see you there!

Beth

Relying on an auto reading from your light meter ends up being a bit of hit and miss when you have chosen to work with a dominant light source.  This assignment will get you thinking about where your light is coming from, and how your camera is going to handle it.

1. Can you see where the light is coming from here in my example with Jules in the late afternoon? I have a dominant light source, the sun.  It’s coming from the left of the frame and backlighting her.  But, we also have light illuminating her face as well.  The light that illuminates her face is reflected light, it’s going from the sun, reflecting off the sky all around and all other objects, and then illuminating her face.  If we only had the sun, and no reflected light, then it would be like standing on stage in a theatre looking up at the audience.  We wouldn’t see anything, because there would just be that one bright spotlight shining on us.

So what I want you to do is set up a situation where you have your subject, in my case, Jules, and a dominant light source like the sun.  You could do this indoors using house lights as well. Then put your subject’s back to the dominant light source and then aim your camera at the scene and see what happens in metering terms.

In my case there is a blanket of white sky that we can see behind her, and my reckoning is that this bright band of white goodness is going to play games with my light meter…why?…because the camera will take a midtone grey reading…remember…it will try to give you a midtone grey, Zone 5 reading for what’s in front of it, regardless of whether or not the subject in question actually belongs in Zone 5.  Bright white sky belongs up in the Zone 9 or 10 range, it’s super bright.  Meanwhile, my key subject, Jules, is the important element to expose correctly, because she is the hero of the shot.

Take a reading and see what you get.  Here, at ISO 400 and F4.5, the shutter speed is reading in pretty fast at 1/800.  The camera wants me to stop down, let less light in, to keep the detail of the sky and render it as a Zone 5 if possible.  In my photo it’s still very light and some of the sky detail has been retained…but poor Julie’s face is looking pretty shadowy, she’s in fact underexposed.

2. Now aim your camera at the ground, to something that tonally looks like a mid tone grey.  Meter that, take a photo, then raise your camera back to the original crime scene, and take another photo with the same settings.

My camera wants to open up a full 2 stops, to 1/200 of a second.  That’s going to let a lot more light in, the sky will blow out, but I’m fine with that, because at the same time I will allow more exposure to Jules’s face, and give her the proper exposure she deserves.

ahhhh, that’s better! As a side note, the picture looks a bit flarey -  a bit washed out.  Flare is direct light shining straight through your lens.  It’s actually non image forming light and results in that washed out look, it’s like putting a fine film of light all over your image.  Like icing sprinkled on a cake, it’s even and indescriminate. Sometimes we can work that to our advantage creatively.  In this case with Jules, well, it’s neither here nor there but is happening because of all that brightness bouncing off those white clouds in the background and coming straight down the barrel of my lens.

3. Now rotate 180 degrees so your back is more or less to the dominant light source, and your subject is more or less looking straight at the light source. We can see the sun is now over my right shoulder, and the way we assess that is by looking at the shadows of our scene. See the big shadow blob to the left of Julie’s nose in my picture below? Again, take a light reading, and shoot as the reading gives you.  Here again, Julie’s white coat is going to confuse my camera.  It’s pretty prominant in the picture and the camera will try to give me a Zone 5 for it…but no, we know this white coat is throwing off the meter, we know now from practice that we probably need to open up 2 stops, and shoot again.

4. Open up 2 stops, and what do we get?  A fairly unflattering portrait of Jules, but at least it is more correctly exposed.  2 stops might have gone a bit far, because the shiny parts of her face on the right are looking quite bright now.  But we can see detail in that deep nose shadow, her hair detail is much better, and the background is much better exposed now.

I hope that from completing Assignments 4 and 5 that you can now:

1. See why you can’t rely on your light meter exclusively to give you a correct exposure.
2. What you need to do to compensate for the camera’s mechanical limitations to get the correct exposure you want.

Conquering the Camera Seminar 3

I’ve hinted at it here, can you guess what we might be looking at in more detail in seminar 3?

Yep, you guessed it, observing light and getting it to work for you in your pictures.  We’ll be doing a mini photo session with a real live human and then working picture that through the file handling process of Lightroom.

Sign Up

Saturday 17th July 2010
9am to 12 noon
$85 per person or $75 each if you bring a friend
Post the booking form to PO Box 4015 Kingston ACT 2604 or
Call 0450 692 599 to pay by credit card
…I’ll then send you the address and what to bring along if you sign up

Maximum 6 people – everybody gets a chance to speak and ask questions.  This course is designed for you to get as much out of it as possible.

Exciting times!

I’ve had lots of interest about Conquering the Camera and will be launching soon some package options…so stay tuned photographers…because I want to see you well on your way to conquering your camera!

tell your friends about this course if:

a) they own a digital SLR camera
b) are still shooting on auto function

B

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Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you’ve stopped by. I hope you gained some new information and insights.  I’d love to hear your comments and will reply asap.

You might like to join me on the BJP page over at Facebook, I’ll see you there!

Beth

Do you get professional framing done? If so, where do you go and why?

I wanted to offer framing as part of my family story packages.  I’ve been selling print-only and was feeling a bit concerned about what people were actually doing with the prints once they took them home.  Shock horror, some of the beautiful prints I’ve made are not being framed at all, and some are being put into inferior frames that are not archival….oh dear!!

I’m so excited to announce that I’ve decided to team up with The Framing Store to give you excellence and accessibility in archival framing.  Too much choice can be overwhelming, so I decided to simplify my framing service to bring in a range of colours, for the same framing stock.  We use beautiful natural timbers for your exquisite pictures, and the best part is, it’s affordable for the average punter, will do the archival job we all need, and best of all, it means when you leave my studio, you take home your beautiful artwork in a hang-ready state.

Good Clean Fun

Jon the owner of The Framing Store decided that his online and advertising presence needed a facelift, so we set about making some pictures to update his catalogue.  I had a pretty open brief, come in and photograph the store, you know, do my thing, take some pictures…well OK, I thought.  Now, given that my philosophy around photography is to capture the essence of things, I thought how am I going to do that for a framing shop???  It’s a business that wouldn’t exist without people…and it turns out the people that work there are fabulous to deal with – Jon, lovely chap, ready for a chat and to make a plan or two…and his awesome team Tara, Scott, Julia and Yoko. Everyone was so fun to work with, it was all a bit weird for them of course being photographed at work, but after a speedy couple of hours of shooting we’d all had a good laugh and a excellent final result to show you now.  I must say too, I went in there today, and they are so committed and customer focused.

I would totally recommend them…try them out…they do have interstate clients so don’t feel limited if you happen not to be in Canberra:

42 Mort St
Braddon ACT 2612
Ph: (02) 6162 3344 Fax: (02) 6162 0358

Opening Hours
Mon – Fri: 9am – 5.30pm
Saturday: 9am – 4pm

Enjoy the images – and crazy Tara at the end with her awesome hair I reckon she could be the store mascot!

Thanks guys,

B

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Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you’ve stopped by. I hope you gained some new information and insights.  I’d love to hear your comments and will reply asap.

You might like to join me on the BJP page over at Facebook, I’ll see you there!

Beth

Do you love good food made with passion?
I crossed paths with Jan Gundlach from Senso Restaurant and Culinary Studio a while back.  I was a bit excited to meet him actually. He’s European (German in fact, I love Germans!…personal oddity about me you probably don’t know), a Michelin Chef, and has worked some serious kitchens around the world.  The Senso website reads:

‘You will not be disappointed. Chef Gundlach is not only a distinguished and highly decorated chef, he is a master craftsman and an artist who works with flair and integrity; he will leave you with the sure knowledge that you have seen a great chef at work. His quiet assurance and unassuming manners will awaken in you a new passion for food.’

If you plan on taking a meal there, it’s located upstairs at Fyshwick Markets.  Perfect access to all that amazing fresh produce that Jan is famous for. Their restaurant hours are

Thursday to Sunday, 9am to 11pm
Monday to Wednesday on request

…and they also have a separate dining area for corporate functions that seats up to 26…and you can learn some cooking through the Culinary Centre…and you can even learn to become a full blown chef if you like!  Phoooarrh, the options!

Karma

I’d invited Jan to my exhibition opening to introduce him along with some other restaurants in town to my work.  He wasn’t able to come to the exhibition, but as luck may have it I still had my chance to meet him through an event held at Mount Majura Vineyard.

Turned out he was in the market for artwork for his beautiful restaurant.  We came to an agreement that I would hang my works there, and in exchange I would photograph his restaurant.  Back in South Africa I went to an excellent restaurant where guests were given a postmarked postcard featuring images from the restaurant.  Great advertisment for the restaurant and it creates a bit of novel fun for the diners.  They simply write the card to a friend, give it back to the restaurant and the restaurant sends it off.  (Eventually my sister received her’s from South Africa…really cool!)

So my task was to return the karma and photograph the restaurant.  I think there are two things to do with a task like this:

1. Photograph the place itself and its product.  Capture its life and energy so the viewer has an insight into what their experience might be like.
2. Document the people behind the business because we can all relate to these types of images and it gives the business a human face.

Thanks Jan!

Postcard Ideas

So here’s an idea for a postcard, oldy-worldy with a bit of retro colour.  Suitable?

B

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Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you’ve stopped by. I hope you gained some new information and insights.  I’d love to hear your comments and will reply asap.

You might like to join me on the BJP page over at Facebook, I’ll see you there!

Beth

We had a great session today, in Conquering the Camera Seminar 2.  I saw a few light bulbs go off which was really cool to see.  We went over camera mechanics again just to be sure, and briefly looked at images submitted from Assignments 1,2 and 3.  We then looked at light metering, and started looking at how to assess light out there in the big wide world.

The Zone System

The Zone System sounds theoretical and old fashioned and probably has nothing to do with modern funky cameras that will do all the thinking for you…but think again…stick with me this is going somewhere.  If you want to understand how to achieve correct exposure, then you will need to switch your camera setting so you can see the histogram reading alongside the thumbnail version of your images that appears on the viewing screen of your camera.  The histogram gives you a measurable description of your exposure in the form of a graph and it’s based on the Zone System.

I love the Zone System:

a) because it was invented by Ansel Adams, we love Ansel because he’s arguably the grandfather of photography and invented this simple system along with his mate Fred Archer back in the 1940′s,
b) because it’s a super simple way to understand how you can assess the scene in front of you and achieve a correct exposure

(graph sourced from photo.club.kmu.edu.tw/; image Beth Jennings Photography)

The Zone System is an exact approach to assessing light and then making an exposure accordingly.  The original numbering was given in Roman numerals, but for ease of reading here I’m going to describe them as Arabic 0-10.

As photographers we can see that the scene before us reflects light.  Some things reflect very little light, like the shadows underneath a bush, while other things reflect lots of light, like a white wall.  The easiest thing you can do is look at a subject and assess it in terms of how much light is reflecting off that subject – and then transfer that assessment over to the Zone System.  This is the simple part, the Zone System ranges from number 0, or Zone 0, the darkest black, to Zone 10, the brightest white, with everything neatly placed in between.   These Zones double and halve in value, which we refer to as a ‘stop’, just like our ISO, Aperture and Shutter Speed.  The majority of things we aim to photograph like trees, people, buildings etc, fall in and around Zone 5, which we call midtone grey.

Now, whilst we as human beings can assess a scene, and see roughly where our various subjects might fall within the Zone System, our cameras cannot.  And, given that most subjects we want to photograph fall in and around Zone 5, or midtone grey, well then it makes sense that our cameras are designed to meter the light reflecting from our subject, and to put the correct exposure, at midtone grey. So, in my picture above of Ben and Doug, we have dark shadows (Zone 0) and bright white walls (Zone 10), and our human subjects falling in and around Zone 5, or midtone grey.  To be precise, Doug’s arms pretty much fall bang on midtone grey (look at his arm and take a mental picture of how dark that grey is, then assess it against the Zone 5 grey on the left).  So if we took a meter reading for Doug’s arm area, accepted the reading and didn’t change it, then stepped back to frame the shot, exposed the shot, well then all of the elements of this picture would fall where they belong in relationship to the Zone System.

So back to Ansel…he was a genuis at using this simple system to its full potential.  And by that I mean, he’d assess his scene, meter it according to Zone 5, make the correct exposure, and then work that picture to a piece of fine art by moulding and massaging those tones in the darkroom…in modern terms we’d say of course in Adobe Lightroom or Photoshop or some other image processor software. The trick is to remember that when we made the switch to digital, it had to be easy, and so camera manufacturers transferred all that Zone System talk straight across.  So if you think you’ve escaped the old school and now ought to make a decent picture just because you have a decent digital SLR, think again, because the principles are all the same, we just now use a sensor rather than a film emulsion…

Histogram

The beauty of digital now is that we can set the camera so that a small thumbnail of the image appears along with the histogram on the viewing screen.  Flip Ansel’s Zone System on its side, so you have Zone 0 blackest black at the left running across to Zone 10 brightest white:

image courtesy of Photo Answers

On the histogram at the top, the height of the black (let’s call it a mountain) depicts the richest level of exposure. If you let your eye jump between this graph and back up to the horizontal Zone chart above it, you can see how the midtones directly correlate with Zone 5.  So lots of black in the middle of the histogram, a peak like a mountain in the middle, means we’ve exposed the midtone area, Zone 5, and around it, very well.  We have rich detail, and this is correctly exposed, with medium to low exposure into the blacks and up to the whites.  The lower two graphs show you how an image looks overexposed (lots exposure over to the right), and underexposed (the mountain is leaning off to the left).

My Tip

When you’re making a photograph I recommend that you aim to have your histogram look like the above entitled ‘Average Histogram’.  Ultimately, to conquer your camera and get decently exposed pictures, you can do this, and totally bypass all this Zone System talk.  The reason I have included all this information behind it, is because I think it’s important we understand how this graph comes to be…because once you understand the rules, you can then break them…ha ha!…more on that later…

Assignment 4

Right soldiers, your mission should you choose to accept it, is to make a photograph whereby you have correct exposure.  During this exercise you’ll see how you can’t rely on the camera’s light meter to always do the work for you.  When we take a photograph, as a starting rule the order of steps to to take are:

a) assess the light
b) select your ISO
c) decide on a shutter speed
d) establish correct exposure using the camera’s built in light meter reading
e) set the camera to the recommended aperture
f) take the picture…and then see how your histogram is looking

Here’s what you need to do:

1. Go outside in late afternoon sun, in my pano here above I picked a random oval this afternoon with my designated subject, Julie. For this type of light I will work with ISO 400 but you can bump it up to 800 as the light is dropping off, the trade off of course is you may get some digital noise.
2. I knew I’d be shooting a person, and wanted to arrest all movement, so I selected shutter speed 1/400, something fast anyway.
3. In my scene here I can see the primary light source, the sun, off to my left.  Behind Julie is a nicely illuminated, evenly lit bush and trees, no nasty bright spots or deep shadows, just even light.  Put your person in a shaded area like this.  To add to my challenge Julie is wearing a white coat.

4. Aim your camera straight at your subject, and take a reading.  My camera tells me that if I use ISO 400, at 1/400 second, that I will need to use F4.5.  Now, Jules is wearing a white coat and it is predominant in the frame.  If we remember back to our Zone System,  this coat probably falls into the Zone 7 area, it’s bright, 2 stops brighter than Zone 5.  But my camera doesn’t know that, it only makes readings for midtone grey, midtone grey, midtone grey.  We take the photo and the result is flat and muddy…it’s underexposed. Why? Because the light meter took a midtone grey reading as always, and it gave me a midtone grey, Zone 5 reading for a subject that in fact should be recorded as a Zone 7 tone.

Oh dear, it’s been recorded as a Zone 5 subject = underexposed and muddy.

5. Relying on the camera to achieve a correct exposure is a furfy.  It is only capable of giving us a reading for midtone grey…so how do we fix my picture of Jules?  What happens if I meter an subject within this area, which itself is a midtone subject.  Let’s aim it down at the ground, at green grass, and take another reading:

To correctly expose this general area and to place the midtones where they belong on the histogram, we need to actually allow more light to the lens – 2 stops more to be exact.  So in my case I’ve slowed the shutter speed and now use 1/100 second.  Keep this new reading, and take your camera back to your subject…back to Jules…

et voila! Jules no longer looks muddy, her coat is bright and just holding detail, her skin is more luminous, the trees and grass in the background are tonally where they should be, recorded at Zone 5 and her curls are dark and shadowy with still some detail held, somewhere around Zone 2.  Let’s look at that same picture now with the histogram:

Green:  The dark curls are down around Zone 2.
Yellow:  The yellow shows the midtone subject (grass and trees) as they appear on the histogram.
Red:  Jules’ skin tone is a bit brighter than Zone 5, it’s up a bit in Zone 6.
Purple: The white coat that dominated the frame and threw off the light meter, is now correctly exposed and sitting nicely in Zone 7-8

Tip

Remember that while your camera will always meter for midtone grey, it is not always reliable if the scene you meter has something in it that is not a mid tone grey subject.  Unlike your camera, you can see all the tones, so look for midtone grey, and meter for that if you have a wild crazy scene tonally speaking, as I did here with Julie’s coat.

This is a fairly chunky post, I know, but it is a step up from auto and requires you to take into account the way a camera is designed to interpret light.  If you learn this, along with the camera mechanics, you’ll be well on your way to conquering your camera, I promise!

Good luck! And please drop in your comments and questions here for the benefit of everyone.

B

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Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you’ve stopped by. I hope you gained some new information and insights.  I’d love to hear your comments and will reply asap.

You might like to join me on the BJP page over at Facebook, I’ll see you there!

Beth

Success!

Conquering the Camera Seminar 1 was a great success!
Conquering the Camera Seminar 2 is this coming Sunday …you can join onto this one easy peasy.

Seminar 2

We’ll cover the basic camera mechanics in manual mode – ISO, Shutter Speed and Aperture.
We’ll look at light and how to meter correctly.
We’ll look at images to explain these elements to see how it all comes together.
* this is a custom designed seminar series tailored to your needs – you tell me your weaknesses, and I’ll give you the practical knowledge you need *

Assignments – yay we love them and the best part is, they’re optional!

Conquering the Camera Assignments 1, 2, and 3 are now on the blog (scroll down).
They cover ISO, aperture and shutter speed, are straightforward to do and will test your knowledge of these 3 areas.
Submit your 9 images, and complete this quick online Q&A to bring you up to speed for Sunday.
You don’t have to do the assignments to come on Sunday, but it helps you if you do.

Sign Up

Sunday 4th July
10am to 1pm
$85 per person or $75 each if you bring a friend
Post the booking form to PO Box 4015 Kingston ACT 2604 or
Call 0450 692 599 to pay by credit card
I’ll send you the address and what to bring along if you sign up

I’m looking forward to seeing you on your way to conquering your camera…and please tell your friends.

B

Lovely Lauren captured in the ferns at the National Botanic Gardens, Canberra xxoo

-  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -  -
Thank you for reading, it means a lot to me that you’ve stopped by. I hope you gained some new information and insights.  I’d love to hear your comments and will reply asap.

You might like to join me on the BJP page over at Facebook, I’ll see you there!

Beth