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Technique PHOTO SCHOOL
Everyone has to start somewhere, even pros, and in Photo School we look at the core skills every beginner needs. This month, deal with tricky portrait exposures, and improve contrast in Lightroom. Camera class
UNDEREXPOSED
Words & pictures by Kingsley Singleton
now you’ve got another problem – they’re in shadow and too dark. This stems from your camera’s reading of the light in the scene; it’s trying to get every part well exposed and that’s not always possible. With portraits, the most important thing is the subject’s face, so if it’s coming out too dark, use your camera’s Exposure Compensation to make it lighter. Exposure Compensation is just a tweak to the settings the camera has decided on – a helping hand from you. Set it to a positive value (like +0.7 or +1.0) to improve the exposure for the subject. This will make the background lighter, too, but that’s not the most important thing. In this case, you need to balance the light somehow, which is something that altering the exposure settings won’t do on its own – that will just make the whole scene lighter or darker. What you need to do is add light to the subject, making them as bright as the background. The easiest way to do this is using a flash, like the pop-up version that’s built in to most DSLRs. Activate the flash, then shoot and check the results. If there’s still not enough light, move closer to the subject, or increase the flash power using the Flash Exposure Compensation option – that’s a +/- with a flash symbol next to it. If the scene is now too bright, reduce the power, or use a lower f/number to close the aperture. n I want the background and the subject to be well exposed, not just one or the other.
You’ll encounter plenty of exposure and lighting problems when shooting people pictures, but most of them can be solved very easily, either by subtle changes to your shooting settings, or by altering your approach and the way the light falls on the subject. When you’re starting out, the second of these is particularly important to bear in mind – it’s easy to get obsessed with camera settings and the technical aspects of photography, but a lot of what makes professional images work goes on outside of changes to shutter speed and aperture. If you’re getting shots like this, it means there’s too much contrast on the subject for the camera to deal with – and the reason is that you’re shooting them in direct light. So, regardless of whether the light is coming from the sun, or from a bulb, make sure it’s not falling on their face unfiltered. Aside from exposure problems, direct light causes harsh shadows which are unflattering. The easiest way to deal with this situation is simply to turn your subject away from the light. Alternatively, block the light somehow, or find some shade so it’s diffused by the time it reaches them. n Some parts of my portrait subject are too bright and some are too dark. How do I fix this?
WITH FILL FLASH
NEXTMONTH: How to use spot metering for dramatic results and how to increase detail in Lightroom
n The subject is backlit and they’re too dark Turning your subject away from the light, is a good start, but
Lightroom’s Tone Curve allows you to freely control the tonal range of your pics, adding contrast and lightening or darkening themto fix anyminor exposure problems. Similar to the Basic tab, you can make adjustments to different parts of the tonal range without necessarily affecting the others, but instead of just Highlights and Shadows you get Lights and Darks, too. The Tone Curve works like this: the left to right axis represents tones from dark to light, and any change in the shape of the line from its diagonal starting point represents whether tones are being made lighter or darker; a diagonal means no changes are being made. It’s easier to illustrate what’s happening with a black & white picture, so all we’ve done to our example here, in the Basic tab, is set the Saturation to -100 and also used the Exposure, Blacks and Whites slider to set the overall black and white points. Software skills Part 16: Using the Tone Curve to control exposure & contrast ADOBE LIGHTROOM
STEP 1: THE BASICS In the Develop module, open the Tone Curve tab and mouse over the line – you’ll see it’s split into Shadows, Darks, Lights and Highlights, depending on where your cursor is positioned. Clicking and dragging on the line in one or more of these areas controls that part of the tonal range. The amount of adjustment is limited by the grey area overlaid. Made a mistake? You can double-click Region to reset the curve. STEP 2: FEATHER THE CONTROL Beneath the Curve are three sliders, which can be used to trim or expand the corresponding part of the tonal range, and alter howmuch it can be changed (the original settings split the tones into quarters). For example you can make the Highlights area broader, telling Lightroom to treat more of the image as a Highlight, and so make that part more controllable. STEP 3: EVENMORE CONTROL At the bottom right of the Tone Curve tab there’s button you can click to edit the points on the curve with even more control. Just click on the diagonal line to add a point then drag to control its position. This allows you to make much more aggressive changes to the tones in the picture, but it should be treated carefully; if you make the curve too steep you can make the pic look seriously bad!
BEFORE USING TONE CURVE
AFTER USING TONE CURVE
Photography News | Issue 16
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