Creative Photography Lab

(Ray)

(Fogra 39)Job:04-30554 Title:RP-Creative Photography Lab

#175 Dtp:225 Page:44

040-063_30554.indd 44 4/26/13 11:05 AM

(Ray)

(Fogra 39)Job:04-30554 Title:RP-Creative Photography Lab

#175 Dtp:225 Page:45

040-063_30554.indd 45 4/26/13 11:06 AM

Creative PhotograP hy Lab

44

Seeing the Light

(Text)

18-Percent Gray

In the early days of photography, someone

figured out that a typical landscape scene

averages about 18-percent reflectance. That

is, if you take all the tones in a black-and-

white photo and mixed them together like

paint, you end up with middle gray that turns

out to be 82 percent white and 18 percent

black. (It seems like it should be 50 percent

gray, but our eyes tell us that 18 percent is

really in the middle.)

The camera doesn’t know what you are

photographing, and it is programmed to

assume that you are taking a picture of a

typical scene that averages out to middle

(18 percent) gray. Surprisingly, this works

most of the time, but it fails if your subject

is made up of all bright or dark objects.

• ash off

• PAS: Use your exposure

compensation feature.

• DSLR: Use manual mode or

exposure compensation.

• smartphone: Use brightness

control if your phone has this

feature.

Settings

“ Every moment of light

and dark is a miracle.”

—Walt Whitman

In the last assignment, we messed with reality by making normal things really bright or really

dark. But what if your subject is dark and you want it to stay dark? Remember, the camera

determines exposure based on the average of all the lights and darks in the scene. This

works for most scenes, but not when your subject is mostly white or mostly black (this is why

you get gray snow or beach sand when shooting in these mostly white environments). Here

we will trick the camera to give us what we want.

Light and Dark

LAB

11

Find or create the following shots:

1. A situation where there is a mostly white

object against a white background. This

could be anything: a white cat on a

white rug or someone from Seattle on

the white sand in Hawaii.

2. Create the same situation with a dark

object and dark background.

3. Photograph each scene using auto or

the recommended exposure, and then

do a bracket from +2 to –2.

4. What works? Is your white object really

white at the normal exposure? Ironically,

we have to overexpose the white

subject to make it light enough and

underexpose when the subject is mostly

dark or black.

Let’s Go!

To get the white look I wanted, I had to overexpose by 1.5 stops.

This wedding dress was shot using the exposure the camera

determined to be normal and doesn’t capture the true whiteness

of the dress.

(Ray)

(Fogra 39)Job:04-30554 Title:RP-Creative Photography Lab

#175 Dtp:225 Page:44

040-063_30554.indd 44 4/26/13 11:05 AM

Creative PhotograP hy Lab Seeing the Light

45

(Text)

18-Percent Gray

In the early days of photography, someone

figured out that a typical landscape scene

averages about 18-percent reflectance. That

is, if you take all the tones in a black-and-

white photo and mixed them together like

paint, you end up with middle gray that turns

out to be 82 percent white and 18 percent

black. (It seems like it should be 50 percent

gray, but our eyes tell us that 18 percent is

really in the middle.)

The camera doesn’t know what you are

photographing, and it is programmed to

assume that you are taking a picture of a

typical scene that averages out to middle

(18 percent) gray. Surprisingly, this works

most of the time, but it fails if your subject

is made up of all bright or dark objects.

In the last assignment, we messed with reality by making normal things really bright or really

dark. But what if your subject is dark and you want it to stay dark? Remember, the camera

determines exposure based on the average of all the lights and darks in the scene. This

works for most scenes, but not when your subject is mostly white or mostly black (this is why

you get gray snow or beach sand when shooting in these mostly white environments). Here

we will trick the camera to give us what we want.

Light and Dark

Let’s Go!

To get the white look I wanted, I had to overexpose by 1.5 stops.

This wedding dress was shot using the exposure the camera

determined to be normal and doesn’t capture the true whiteness

of the dress.

I wanted the black suit to be black in the photograph, so I under-

exposed by one full stop.

This black suit turns gray using the camera’s “normal” exposure.

(Ray)

(Fogra 39)Job:04-30554 Title:RP-Creative Photography Lab

#175 Dtp:225 Page:45

040-063_30554.indd 45 4/26/13 11:05 AM