Practical Artistry: Light & Exposure for Digital Photographers

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Understanding Exposure

I stood on a high rock in Berkeley, California, across the Bay from the Golden Gate Bridge. With my camera on my tripod,

I trained a long lens (600mm in 35mm equivalency terms) on the setting sun behind the bridge. I’d been coming back

to this spot every day for almost a month, hoping to capture the setting sun in exactly the right position behind the

bridge, and now the moment was at hand.

In taking this photo, I was careful not to look directly through my telephoto lens at the sun to avoid damaging my eyes.

I held a welding shade filter (a very dark piece of glass) in front of my eyes as I composed photos in the viewfinder. I also

reviewed captures in the camera’s LCD screen, and modified settings depending on what I saw in the LCD.

After all the waiting, patience paid off. As the sun started to sink below the horizon, I got this shot. The sailboat in the

foreground was an added bonus. The trick in measuring the light so I could find the exposure for this photo was to

ignore the disk of the setting sun, and to ignore any overall average light readings of the scene (because the overall

readings would be biased by the brilliant sunlight).

I expected the highlights to blow out in any case, so I needed to ignore the sun and expose for the generally less bright

areas. I used spot metering on the sailboat in the foreground to get the exposure I ended up using. ...