Cross-lighting the Sun

Molly Jaye Daly at Redhead Beach NSW

Overpowering the sun with a small off-camera flash, well who would have thought it ????

Believe it or not, this is a very simple process that anyone can do with a small flash. It can even be achieved by the pop-up flash of your camera!

What you will be doing is using the ND4 filter to block out some light. The Sunny F16 rule can be brought down to a Sunny F5.6 – F8 rule by using either a ND filter, a circular polariser…or both. I used both.

. . .Here’s what you need to do it

Student Question – Subject Brightness Range

Hi everyone,
I have just recently received an email from one of our recent students, Erin.

The Question

“Hi Tam,
I’ve just been practising different exposures in my backyard & one thing I’ve noticed is that I can’t seem to expose correctly for the sky as well as the backyard.
How do I get both a bright backyard & a noticeable sky? The ISO was set to 100 and I was white balanced for a cloudy day.

Many thanks Tam!
Cheers,
Erin”

The Answer

During the day, there can be up to 22 levels of light; that is 22 light levels of light from the darkest part of your scene to the brightest part.
Digital SLR cameras can only process 5 (5.25) of these levels.

So, if you expose for the backyard (as seen below fig.1.), the camera’s 5 levels will be based around the low to mid range of light levels, leaving the sky far too bright to process, and will show as pure white.

Exposure Values in photography

An Exposure Value is achieved by correctly setting your aperture and shutter speed in order to expose for a scene. When the EV is known, it then gives you a range of Aperture and Shutter Speed settings, which you can choose from. This particularly helpfull to change the look of your photo. E.g., more depth of field or more motion blur.

Click…HERE to have a look at an Exposure Value Table

A Good Example

The story
Today is a bright sunny day and you want to shoot a portrait of your partner in the back garden.

The settings
Because you are well aware of the Sunny F16 Rule, you choose to set:

F16 @ 1/125sec.

The outcome
Well, as F16 is a small aperture(hole), it will give you a fairly deep depth of field. So, when you look at your image on the back of your camera, you will see that next door’s washing is obsuring the image. It’s done this by creating chaos around your portrait for being in focus too!

The remedy

Unable to save a Lightroom image in Photoshop

The Problem is:
After I manipulate a RAW image in Adobe Lightroom, I export it. After further post-processing in Photoshop I am unable to save it.

The Answer:…….

The World’s Greatest Shave

Hello everyone,

Well the big day came and went, and what a fantastic day we had. We started the day expecting around 9 people to show up and shave their heads for this great cause. In the end about 14 persons participated and everyone had a great time.

To view the images from the day, taken by John Turton, click …..HERE, and look for the link at the top of the page.

Thanks to everyone for their support and participation.

Until next time . . .

iMAG Photo Comp winner for March

Congratulations and well done to Michelle Pala, and her Bubbles of Delight.

Michelle has won herself a full Creative Digital Photography Course, at Studio 22.

NCAC STUDENT shoot

Last week I had the fantastic opportunity to conduct a photo shoot with Anna Hyczka and some of her students – at the NCAC.

On both days we shot within the confines of the Centre’s Black Box theatre, for obvious reasons. Below is a few images from the shoot. There will be more to follow.

FYI, Ben – this brilliant actor is only 16 years of age (16 – going on 40!), and such a great guy.

CONGRATULATIONS Jo Barnes

Well done Jo, on winning the FEB S22 / Leader competition.
Jo has wone herslelf a place on our Creative Digital Photography course.

Here is Jo’s winning entry – her newly born daughter HOPE.

Molly in the STUDIO #1

I managed to get my 21 month old Molly to sit / pose…well happen, infront of the lights. We went up the Studio 22 to pick up some books and she started messing about on the beanbag. So I flicked on the 160w/s with softbox and set a ball-park aperture (f11)…got this is on the 2nd shots.

Time to compose

Liz, one of my first students, sends in this little gem, from up the bay.  Other than a few composition tips I reckon Liz is well on her way to nailing some good landscapes.