How to properly exposure such pictures?

mesmerized

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Hello there,

I'm wondering if there's a way to properly expose this scene so that both the dragon-lion and the tower behind it are well-lit. Right now the tower is covered in shadows. What's more, the sky is totally blown out. I'd be grateful for any suggestions.
 

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Fill flash is one option. Another is HDR.

You can't have everything. You can have well exposed sky and full lit shadows. You have to either alter (flash) or blend (HDR) lighting. Are you familiar with EV and dynamic range?
 
Third alternative depending on subject matter is to shoot RAW and pull the shadows a lot in post. If you shoot at low ISO, Fuji's excel at this from my experience. I use HDR a lot in my urbex work, but I am often able to use a single shot where I was absolutely sure I would have to use the HDR bracket. Once you do that, you have to play a lot with the shot to put some "punch" back in it as pulling the shadows so much tends to "flatten" the look a lot.

And sometimes, the old ways are best: burn and dodge selectively the RAW to pull the shadows up and the highlights down just where you need the activity to avoid affecting the entire shot, but it's more work and requires practice.

But there are for sure limits to these techniques and I agree completely with what WT21 said as well.
 
And sometimes, the old ways are best: burn and dodge selectively the RAW to pull the shadows up and the highlights down just where you need the activity to avoid affecting the entire shot, but it's more work and requires practice.

But there are for sure limits to these techniques and I agree completely with what WT21 said as well.

Good point, too, on dodging and burning.

That was the first thing that I learned was "not as easy as you'd think." Takes a lot of time, especially at high contrast edges. In this case, bringing up the interior of the canopy while leaving the edges more in shadow might actually work well.
 
Not knowing the details of the location my first reaction was 'wrong weather and wrong time of day'. Plus (apart from the blown sky) it looks about a stop under exposed.

If this were sufficiently important to me I'd probably use a bit of flash (maybe three remote heads) slaved to get a few lumens into the areas under roofs and maybe cheat by gradient filling the sky areas with a faint blue. To take that much effort, though, it would need to be a paying job.

:cool:
 
There are no shadows, so I'm assuming it's overcast, which is about the best you can hope for in terms of DR. If the sun was shining, it would be even harder to pull off. Agree with Albert on whether this is a key photo or not.
 
Thanks for all your answers.

Unfortunately, I don't know what "dodging and burning" is. I know it's my terrible skills that make me incapable of taking nice shots but whenever I see wonderful skies like here Mu-43 (home page, a trip to US) I feel envious. How come my pics ALWAYS have blown-out skies?
 
You should research exposure and dynamic range. Cambridge Colour is one place to start. Learn Photography Concepts or DPR http://www.dpreview.com/glossary/digital-imaging/dynamic-range or just google for it. There are tons of on-line resources for reading.

Also, get and read Bryan Peterson's Understanding Exposure book.

Dynamic range basically refers to the extremes of light and dark. The farther apart the extremens, the harder it is to get it all in the picture without "blowing out" your highlights (everything turns pure white with no detail) or "clipping" your shadows (everything turns black with no details).

Scenes where dynamic range is small or tight are easier to photograph and keep detail in the lights and shadows. Scenes with extreme DR mean you have to choose -- either keep the detail in the highlights OR keep the detail in the shadows. If you want detail in both, in extreme DR situations, then you have to alter the situation. Either alter the scene -- by lighting up the shadows, and therefore narrowing the DR of the scene -- or play some picture tricks, such as using exposure blending via HDR, or "dodging and burning" which is an old film term, but in modern terms, it means to darken the highlights and lighten the shadows to restore detail. This is MUCH more do-able with RAW files. Lastly, you could apply a filter, like a graduated ND filter (Graduated neutral-density filter - Wikipedia)

All these "great" pictures you see are likely not OOC (out-of-camera as is), but were likely worked on in post (post product -- what you do to the picture after you take it).
 
Your original picture you posted has tremendously wide dynamic range, for deep shadows under the roof to full bright sky. No camera that I'm aware of will capture that with an OOC jpg with full detail in both. You have to either give up detail in one or the other, or try some of the approaches mentioned above.

Having said all that composition still reigns supreme. Even some pics with "horrible" exposure can be stunning if the right subject, framing, perspective and even shutter speed (as applicable are used) and often, IMO, some scenes that have perfect detail all the way across are just boring (all grey) or hard on the eyes (badly done HDR)
 
Those pictures were shot I think on f/20 aperture (or some such very small settings), and (I assume) also used some serious light-stopping ND filter (for those daytime shots).

Edit: Confirmed, some serious NDs here:

If I can recall, the shark pic was taken at around 11am. 10stop ND with a 3stop GND.
The Gathering was taken at around 1pm with a 10stop ND. Both were taken on the same day.
It was sunny and therefore, I had to use F18-F20.

I always try to keep my aperture at F5.6 to F10 to maximize the sharpness. However long exposure water/seascape is an important part of my composition. I tend to shoot 50s to 60s for waterscape.

If I maintained at F5.6 to F8 I could not achieve the effect I want. Between sharpness vs composition/effect, I always choose the latter.
BTW, I also overexpose a bit, up to +1eV.
 
since center weighted mode doesn't seem to follow the focus point, i'd have tried exposing in that shadow area with the centered focus point and then recomposing. or just try a different exposure mode to see which works better for that scene.

(Sent from another Galaxy via Tapatalk.)
 
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