Light — Science & Magic, 6th Edition

CHAPTER 9

The Extremes

e extremes are the lightest and the darkest groups of grays or colors in a

photograph. For years they were the parts of the picture most likely to lack

quality because of the inherent, irremediable defects in lm. Good pho-

tographers managed to get excellent pictures anyway because they paid a lot

of attention to these defects and how to minimize them.

e extremes are a potential problem in any photograph, but in a white-

on-white or a black-on-black image, pictures composed entirely of the

extremes, little defects can quickly turn into big ones.

Digital technology, lacking some of the lm defects, has eliminated some

of these problems but revealed a new one: some people like these “defects.” If

we shoot a ...