Understanding Exposure
Friday, July 25th, 2008About a week ago I picked a book titled “Understanding Exposure” by Bryan Peterson. Because I shoot outdoors I’m always presented with challenging lighting situations. I bring a reflector to every shoot and I’ve started to use a flash mounted on top of my camera. w I still find my self wanting to shoot primarily with natural light and use the flash or reflector for effect or when I absolutely need it.
During my last few shoots I really had a difficult time with my exposure settings. I felt I needed some help in this aspect of my shooting. Bryan Peterson does a great job of explaining exposure in a way that makes sense. Easy to follow and very natural even if you know very little about cameras and how they work.
One idea he presents which blows my mind away is the idea that there are at least six maybe seven correct exposure settings that you can make for any situation yet there is only one artistically correct choice. I hope I got that idea right because it’s a big deal. What it means to me is that there is one image I want to capture and only one correct exposure setting for it. That’s idea totally destroyed everything I thought about photography.
This weekend I’ll take my camera and play around with some of what I learned from the book. Unfortunately I can’t afford to shoot with a model this weekend, but it’ll be good to just play around and see what I see.
