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Blown highlights
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Hi –
I like shooting with available light – I generally avoid flash (and even flash
fill), because I don’t like the results. This means that when I’m photographing
interiors and the windows are in the frame, the daylight blasts in the
windows. Here’s an example of what I’m talking about:
(Those of you who looked at or commented on my shot the the Polish church
ceiling will have seen the same effect there.)My question is, I read a lot on here about blown highlights and the perception
that they’re a no-no – what’s the reasoning behind this? Is it always desirable
to stop down to avoid blown highlights, most likely at the risk of losing detail
on the main subject?Speaking for myself, I like the fact that there’s no distracting clutter to be
seen out the window. Your eye is drawn the the brightest area on a picture
first, but the lack of detail means that your attention is quickly
diverted to the person in the photo and the geometry of the staircase.cheers
BenI brought this subject up myself a while ago.
https://www.photographyireland.net/viewtopic.php?t=21599
Well, whatever about the paper white of the windows, there are still blown highlights on the face-
which is probably a more critical area to get the exposure right-If you cropped out the windows, the histogram would look far better-
I don’t mind the blown highlights through windows too much-
if it improves the picture- often for the reasons you mentioned.In this case, you might ask yourself are the windows that important,
and is there another composition that removes the problem,
and perhaps improves the picture too-As it stands, this picture might tolerate a sliver off the left,
to remove that red bin…j
Having been through Sinead’s thread,
it seems that there might be some genres which are more strict-It really depends, as ever, on the picture-
j
Jess the Springer wrote:
I brought this subject up myself a while ago.
Hi Jess, thanks for the link. I’d done some searching on this forum but the
search functionality isn’t great – it doesn’t return the actual sentence
containing the keyword(s) you search for.Interesting discussion on there. The key point is “control of these scene”. In
the shot I took, you can see I didn’t have that – I exposed for the jacket, not
the face.Seems to me that when photographing people (even full-length) the person’s face
is always the subject – that is, the entity in the photo from which you take
your exposure reading. I mostly shoot manual and will often step in close to get
the exposure reading I want from a particular part of the scene.cheers
Benjb7 wrote:
Well, whatever about the paper white of the windows, there are still blown highlights on the face-
which is probably a more critical area to get the exposure right-If you cropped out the windows, the histogram would look far better-
I don’t mind the blown highlights through windows too much-
if it improves the picture- often for the reasons you mentioned.In this case, you might ask yourself are the windows that important,
and is there another composition that removes the problem,
and perhaps improves the picture too-As it stands, this picture might tolerate a sliver off the left,
to remove that red bin…j
Hi jb7 –
Good points. Here’s the picture again with just the bucket lopped off (…is
that really what it is? Funny that, I didn’t want to see it, so my brain ignored
it.)…and an even tighter crop, placing Aisling at the nodes of the ‘rule of
thirds’, just out of curiousity:(I use picnik for quick and dirty modifications.)
Thanks for taking the time to look at these and comment. I appreciate your input.
cheers
BenAs humans, we generally look first to the face, part of our recognition systems I guess, so it often dictates a person’s first impression of a photo. Over exposure on the face risks reducing fine detail, such as hair, jewellery, textures. The best facial shots tend to show character via these very details. Spillage (my term) can also occur, where the edge of darker objects are fringed by the overexposure – you can see this on the locks of hair on your subject.
If you shot RAW, overexposure (to a limited degree) can be corrected, less so if taken as a jpeg. Also consider using the shadow and highlights and/or dodge and burn functions of software.
I recently was shooting at a wedding and a lot of my shots were like yours with overexposure. Some were corrected (salvagted?) at the RAW conversion stage, most were binned. I was shooting -2/3rdEC to try and control overexposure in the very high contrast situation of a sunny autumn day.
You also say you are reluctant to use flash. In this particular case, if you had a swivel head, you could have fired to your right to bounce some light back onto the subject, which would reduce contrasts and help the camera expose more evenly. Have a look at this site:
http://planetneil.com/tangents/flash-photography-techniques/
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