Hi Marc - if you have a look at your histogram you will see that you have blown whites as evident by the graph climbing up the RHS.
What exposure mode were you using??
Also do you use the histogram on the camera LCD and do you have your overexposure blinkies turned on?
Hi Lance,
Thanks for the comments. I do use the histogram and usually have my blinkies turned on. I tried various exposures and due to the extreme backlighting I had to chose to overexpose the highlights on the side of the neck or have the face in deep shadow.
I love the subject, the pose and the BG. Great focus and detail.
If you'd brought the exposure down to recover the detail in the highlights, wouldn't the BG have still been dark when you pumped it back up in PS? Also, since the BG is very consistant, couldn't you have applied selective darkening or blur?
I'm a noob, so excuse me if I sound like an idiot. I'm still struggling with these highlights and my approach, thanks to this forum, would have been something like -1EV here in the camera, then pull it up in post.
Great example to discussion !! First point regarding the pose itself you do want to have that all important head angle, the just looking away does detract from the image... best to stay with the bird and wait for the right moment !!
Light wise the image is not totally backlit, you can see the light on the right side creeping around the neck. For backlit subjects you will overexpose the bg but the bird will well exposed. Normally plus one to two works well ..... but what are you metering on?
Looking at the dark bg tells me the meter is going to open up to compensate, just don't know how much of the image was cropped which makes a difference. This histogram should have been blown on the right side form the looks of the bird !! Best to give the mete compensation and mode to make better sense of what is going on !!
For some of these type images using fill flash works just perfect !!!
HI Marc - AL has said what I was going to say - you didnt say what exposure mode you were using, as AL has said looks like hte camera has seen all that dark BG and opened up to compensate.
Keep em coming :)
Hi Marc,
you have been given sound advise...the thing that catches my eye is the head angle, for the next one its best to be patient and wait for your subject to offer a better angle or if possible move your position to adjust your capture angle...looking forward to your next one...:cool:
I was using center weighted metering - obviously the meter was fooled by the dark background, a forest of trees. I guess minus 2 or so was called for. I have tried adjusting the raw file but the results are not really satisfactory so far... Regarding the head angle - this is something I am just starting to learn about (thanks BPN!) - and I realize now it would have made a big difference.
Grey Heron
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