Written by I predict that today is going to be a pretty good day. Got a good snow overnight so I’m considering taking some pictures of the plaza at night if I got some time to get some shots after a reception that I’m doing this afternoon and evening.
Speaking of receptions, I finally bought a flash bracket for the camera in order to reduce the red-eye that I’ve been getting. I’ve always been getting it, but lately, it seems that I’ve been getting it quite a bit more, so in order to reduce time sitting here at the PC, I just got a flash bracket to reduce some of my picture processing time.
A bit of education here for those that don’t know what the flash bracket does. Which I’m assuming is the majority of people who aren’t really serious about photography. The basic cause of red-eye is the reflection of the flash directly into the lens. The reason why it comes up red is because of the blood vessels inside your eyes. The flash bracket raises the flash higher in order to increase the angle, which helps prevent the flash from reflecting back at the lens. Say for example if you threw a rubber ball at a wall directly in front of you. That ball has a good chance of coming back and hitting you before it would hit anything else. But what if you threw it at the bottom of the wall, or at the wall at a point that’s higher than your height. Or even better, to the side. Basically, the ball has a much lower chance of “reflecting” back and hitting you directly. The same principles apply to the flash bracket.
While the subject is on my mind, a few people have asked me how I expose for the snow. Since it appears as pure white, cameras tend to compensate for the exposure, making the snow itself gray, and the subject being photographed much darker than it/he/she should be. Well, my ultimate secret is that I use a light meter to measure the exact light so that I get an accurate exposure. But when I don’t have my meter available, there is another technique that I can use. A couple actually. First, I could spot meter on the subject itself, which means that I tell my camera to expose JUST for the subject. But it might be better to meter on something as close to gray in tone as possible. Especially if your subject has a darker skin tone. The sky is an excellent source for exposure locking if it’s nice and gray. Another way is trial and error. Use exposure compensation or go completely manual and take shots. Look at the histogram after each one and stop right when the graph reaches the far right hand side of the histogram. It’s okay if you go a little bit into it, just make sure you don’t have the peaks in your histogram cutting off on the right hand side. Typically, exposure compensation of 1 stop may do the trick.
Well, gotta run. Got plenty of things on the schedule for today. Peace out!
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