Where light tricks you

In part two of this exploration of exposure, we look at situations where everything looks great, but when you look at the image in the camera, it is nothing like what you saw.

We’ll look at why this happens and what you can do about it.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hello again and welcome to another podcast. Last week we looked at AE lock, which is an important function on our cameras. And this week, what we're going to look at is how our own perception can trick us. So the kind of situation that I'm sure you've experienced is where the light is it's great, light, it feels perfect. You've got soft edges, you've got a good direction from it, it's atmospheric. And you just look at it and think, this is going to be really good. This feels just fantastic. And then you get home, and when you get to look at your images, particularly on a laptop or a larger screen, they really don't match what you remember seeing. And the important thing here in this particular situation is that the problem wasn't the camera, but it's where we ourselves misread the light. So what we're going to look at in this second part of a three-part mini-series, I guess, and the podcast, which is to do with light and exposure, is to look at the situations where we are our own worst enemy, and we need to really understand a little bit about what's going on. So last time we looked at AE lock, how we lock exposure, how we can take control of the situation. And the important thing to remember is that even when you do everything right, technically, light can still trick you. So the kind of things we're going to think about here, and I want you to consider because we've all had these experiences, but these are the kind of things to think of when we're looking at light, is a time of day. The direction of the light, so obviously light is directional, which leads to shadows and highlights and everything else. When we're looking, particularly at wildlife, but where we have a subject, especially a moving subject, what's going on with that subject? What's their behavior? So if they're stationary, that makes life a lot easier because the light won't change, or at least not because of changes they've made in their position. But when they're moving, that means we have to be particularly watchful and uh wary of what's happening with the light on our subject. And then why did the light feel right? So when we get into these situations where this kind of error happens, the key thing is nothing actually felt difficult about it. It felt great. Everything seemed to be coming together, and then what we got as a result was not what we were expecting, not what we uh were aiming for. So the key thing that we're looking at here in this podcast is human perception. So being primates, we have um a pretty good um optical system of our own. It's the combination of our eyes and our brain. And what happens there is that our optical system automatically adjusts for changes in light, whether that means it's getting darker or it's getting brighter, or suddenly we have bright light, as when we were in shadow or going the other way, our optical system adjusts automatically for those conditions. And what it's easy to forget is that the camera doesn't. Now, the other thing that happens when we're looking at an image and when we're taking a photograph, particularly if it's something that's really inspiring, is that there's an emotional connection as well. So we feel a mood. Now, mood is something that's really important, particularly as you start to move on in your photography. Once you master the basics and you can capture an image and you can capture it well, you've got good exposure, you've got your movement correct. The next place to go is mood. How do we create an image that engages the viewer? And the way that you connect with an image is emotionally, if you think of any image that's particularly inspired you or has really grabbed you, it's because it's the mood, it's emotion. There's been an emotional connection with that image. And this also happens when we're capturing images. We can have amazing light, an animal we've wanted to photograph for a long, long time, and everything seems to come together. And you trust the scene, we just trust what we're seeing, and what ends up happening is that we expose for the feeling and not the reality, because we've got that difference between how our optical system works and how the camera is working. The contrast, if you've got a harsh contrast, you can which I'll refer to as a high dynamic range, which I'll explain more in the next podcast. But essentially, you have a harsh contrast, it's hiding the nice light. Um, you've got a big difference between dark areas and light areas, and then when you get that happening, you just then you tend to start losing detail, and some of the more subtle um parts of the image that good lighting will bring out. Your highlights start quietly clipping, you're overexposing, and shadows lose detail. So these this is not about settings, this is about concept, but it's about how what we're seeing is not what the camera is able to record because we're starting to push what the camera is capable of doing for us. So the problem comes down to we trust our eyes. This is where as photographers we trust our eyes, and we have we forget that our vision adapts much faster than um the camera will. And in fact, the camera, and we've got auto modes in the camera, um, but again, they're exposing for different things. And I'm going to explain that in the next podcast because that will get into uh a little bit more of the technology that goes on, and often we'll find that wildlife situations tend to exaggerate that mismatch because wildlife will tend to if you're looking at prey animals particularly, they'll tend not to be out in bright light often. And in fact, the same goes for predators because they don't want to be seen. So a lot of wildlife doesn't particularly want to be seen by um other wildlife that will threaten it, so it will tend to be hidden a lot of the time. So the lighting on our subjects will not be ideal, but if we don't remember that, we can completely misread the scene or it will look fantastic to us, but we forget that the camera can't keep up. So let me I'm gonna go through in this podcast some situations which do relate to wildlife more than general, but they certainly apply to general photography. And they're situations where or that will lead to this mismatch, and it will tend to bring out this mismatch a lot more. So these are the kind of situations just to remember, have them in your the the imaginary notes in your back pocket that uh things you need to remember remind yourself about in certain situations, which I find very helpful. So when you have backlit animals, they tend to glow. Um, particularly, you'll see fur, and I've got a there's a picture of a kudu I took that I absolutely love. Um, and the fur on the on the profile of the animal is really well lit. Um, so was the urine when it decided to relieve itself, but that was uh a picture I decided not to uh share or take. Um, high contrast scenes, again, our eyes will balance for them, but the camera won't, so high contrast scenes can really trip us up. Uh, you'll you can end up with silhouettes because, again, you are able to see detail because your eyes are adjusting all the time, and your eyes and brain combination are adjusting, but the camera won't. So, what the camera sees will be um a lot cruder, let's say, in terms of its ability to handle variations in uh lighting and tone. And light can change very quickly, and again, we are very good at adapting for that. So these are all about misreading the light. This is not about technique at this stage, this is just basic misreading, which is something that we we do automatically. It's actually not misreading when we do automatically, our eyes are adjusting all the time so that we can see what's going on, which is fantastic. But as photographers, we need to remember what's going on. So let's look at situations. So I've got a few here. So one of them is backlight that feels cinematic, and that can be an amazing um kind of lighting to work with. But of course, what happens is that the backlight it feels beautiful, you get a light around the edges, you've got atmosphere, you've got separation, your breed your brain will tend to read it as great photographic uh light. But what actually happens is our eyes have adapted. The subject looks very readable to us in terms of being able to see what it is. Um the camera, though, will see massive areas of brightness, and what will happen then is the subject is often underexposed, and that can be quite a surprise because to us it doesn't look under like it would get underexposed because we've adapted our own vision as seeing that subject differently. So basically the backlight feels generous, but the sensor experiences it's quite an aggressive, harsh light. Now, another favorite is golden hour, and golden hour is a fantastic light, and we tend to associate it with warmth and softness. So will it we we tend to one way of looking at this is we expect forgiveness, as in its nice soft light, it's perfect time of um day to get really nice photographs, and um maybe we expect the camera to give us a little more latitude than we perhaps deserve because we're not allowing for it. So, if you think about it, what happens at golden hour? So you've got low light, which means we've got much stronger directional light, it's coming from low down, um, there are fewer areas of reflection often, so that light is very directional. That means the contrast has increased, it hasn't decreased, and small movements in our subject can actually make a big change in the exposure we need to capture them correctly. So the light looks gentle, but the shadows often aren't. And although the contrast is sorry, the colour is soft, the contrast often isn't. So when you're photographing at golden hour, you really need to be very aware not only of the changes and how the light is operating, but often you've got a relatively rapid change in how much light there is. So I'm always just rechecking my ISO, I'm checking the photographs I'm taking. So it's it's the important thing is to keep checking what the exposure is what exposure is actually working for you in that situation and keep rechecking. Um, now another one is open shade with a bright background. So open shade feels controlled and calm. What happens is your subject is evenly lit, but often the background is much brighter than we realize because, again, we've adapted our own eyesight to prioritize the subject, but the camera hasn't. So the scene will feel balanced. But if you're looking at it on a histogram, it actually won't be. So whether or not you use the histogram setting on your camera, it can be quite useful to do that just to look at the dynamic range and how much of a spread of light you you're actually experiencing, or the camera is experiencing when before you take that shot. Now, where you have high contrast, again, your eyes your eyes will adapt for that. So essentially, what we're doing our vision system is compressing contrast constantly so that we can see what's there. And obviously the camera isn't, so we're not seeing clipped highlights or blocked shadows. The camera is basically recording what's there, but without that adaptation going on. So this is one of those situations that's really likely to trick us because nothing feels wrong, it actually feels like quite a nice scene, and we'll just dive in there. So remember, you've smoothed that scene out, the camera won't. It will record all of the edges, all of the uh the contrast there. Um, silhouettes is a great one, and this is something I've been asked about a few times. So I mentioned this in the previous podcast looking at AE lot, but where you get silhouettes that you didn't intend to make, because for you the subject's clearly visible, and and um a great example of this um it just came up to me because it was a specific example that somebody asked me about was someone coming through a doorway that was so the outside, the other side of the doorway was quite brightly lit. This person comes in through the doorway, and they again visually we can see them, we can see their eyes, their detail, all of that, but the camera just sees a silhouette because it hasn't been able to adapt for the change in light. So you've got that strong background, that very bright background, and that will drive how the camera exposes for that image, which means that we lose all detail in the subject or most of the detail, and we end up with a silhouette that we really don't want. So that's fine if you intended to do that, if it's if it's been artistic, but if if if it's accidental, it's something that you need to know how to uh compensate for. Um, the flat light is another one because it feels very easy, but that lack of contrast can again hide errors. So it means that you can have underexposed areas that you don't really don't notice. And later, when you try and compensate in post-processing because you've got a bad exposure to begin with, you can find that suddenly you really can't pull much out of that image. So post-processing is something that uh to me is uh just one of the one aspect, it's a fundamental aspect of digital photography. But you really need to have a good exposure in the first place if you're going to be able to get something uh really worthwhile from the image that you've shot. So if your exposure is off, then your chances of getting a really good impactful image are much reduced. Okay, another good one to remember is reflected light, whether it's um off water or sand or snow. So the reflections feel bright but natural, but what often happens is that from the camera's perspective, that uh scene is very bright, and you can be looking with a lot of overexposure going on, and again, typically what you're gonna do is you're gonna lose your subject and all of that. And um this is particularly common if you are photographing wildlife near water, uh, particularly where you have a bright sunny day, you'll you may well have massive overexposure going on that you you haven't compensated for. So, again, test shots are really good to just ground you and make sure that the camera is capturing what you want to capture, and to just be aware again that what you're seeing is not the same as what the camera is seeing. And then the final one is um to look at um when you've got transitional light, so basically the light is changing moment to moment. Um, it can be quite slow at times, other times it isn't, but if it's a slow change, and that could be where a cloud gradually drifts over, so it might be um fairly thin on the edges but gets quite dense. Uh basically anywhere where your exposure can drift without much warning, and you haven't noticed because again, your own eyes are compensating for the change in light, so the scene looks pretty unchanged to you, but in fact, the exposure has changed. And if you haven't compensated or you haven't got the camera set up to compensate for that, you again are going to have exposure problems. So the important thing about this is that light often or we aren't tricked by light, let's put it this way, when it's obviously bad, because we'll see that, we'll notice it, and and where you've got situations where you're expecting the light to be changing. Generally, we will be on top of that and we'll make sure that we are making sure we get a good correct exposure. It tends to trick us when it feels good, when we've connected with it, and perhaps when we've got drawn in emotionally to the scene that we're photographing. So it's just important to keep rechecking again if you're using digital cameras to make sure that what you have shot is pretty much what you're expecting. And if you haven't, then to make sure that you're correcting or correctly exposing for your subject, and that will that will keep you right. And this is where we tend to trip over. Okay, so um what are the real takeaways for this before we go on to the next podcast, the the one that we'll be looking at on Friday? The key thing is we are the key thing is to always stay on top of exposure, basically. So pause pause, even when the lighting feels good, just regularly check that the exposure is correct. Unless there's no change in light at all and your subject is static, then you're not gonna you won't expect to change. But any other situation where things are changing, it does no harm at all to just quickly check on the back of your camera. Uh don't do chimping where you're uh looking in in massive detail, but just do a quick check to make sure the exposure is good. Um be aware of emotionally getting drawn into a scene. It's great to do that. It's um I I love that kind of photography, but again, you have to remember you are there as a photographer in that moment. You want to make sure that the images you get are really good, particularly if this is um a trip that you won't repeat. If it is, say, your first time in Africa, somewhere like that, Africa's amazing. Um, but you want to while you're enjoying it, while you're enjoying that fantastic experience, also remember to there's a part of you that is a photographer and you need to do the work, you need to make sure that the tool that you're using is set up correctly, because if you haven't done that or if you forget to do it, that's where you can be really disappointed with the results you uh come back with. So that's really it for this podcast. So last time we looked at um one aspect of the the tool that is our camera, and that's exposure lock, which allows us to uh deal with scenes that have a big change, a big dynamic range, the big difference between the brightest area and the darkest area, particularly where it impacts the subject. This one is about just remembering that what we see is not what the camera will see. And and the reason that I uh decided to um devote a podcast to this is that one of the comments I often get, and I've I've often seen is people get very disappointed. The classic is the beautiful sunset with amazing colours, amazing lights, all of that stuff. And you photograph it with your camera, and what comes back is something that is really awful. It's flat, um, it's maybe overexposed, it might be underexposed, but it's just nothing like what you saw with your eyes. And that's the reason why that we have um an optical system that's evolved over millions of years, and it's really good at what it does for what we need in in terms of how we've what we've evolved for, the sort of situations we've evolved for. And it's really important to remember that our camera does not work in the work in the same way. And um knowing that as photographers, one part of our job is to make sure that we stay on top of exposure and having good exposure on our subject is really important. It's one of the things to get right. It's a fundamental thing to get right. Get the thing in focus and get it exposed correctly. If you do those two things, you will get really good results, or you or at least you'll get results that are very usable. You can do things with. Okay, so um that's that's it for this podcast. In the next podcast, that will come out on Friday. I'm gonna be talking about what happens when you say, okay, so complete counter to what I've spoken about in this episode, in this podcast. Alright, so um I'm gonna assume that what I'm seeing is not what the camera is gonna see, and I'm gonna trust my camera. And we're gonna talk in that episode about how that can really let you down badly. So um, hopefully you've got some tips, one or two things you can take away with from this episode. Uh, do please practice. Um, get to know your camera a little bit if you haven't used it for a while, or if you're new to your particular camera or new to photography. The key thing is to practice and really get good exposure. It's one of those things, if you put the effort in, it will really pay dividends in future. Um, you will get images um that I think you'll be really pleased with. You certainly will not have to go through that. It's it's a major disappointment if you go somewhere, if it's something you've really been looking forward to. And I remember my first time in Africa, and I was lucky, I I did all the work, and that was a film camera, and I came back with some images I was really pleased with. But it must be absolutely devastating if you go to a trip like that and what you come back with a really awful photograph. So that's what I'm here for to help you with your photographies. So um, please join me again on Friday. Please like and subscribe. I will speak to you then. Bye for now.