7 SIMPLE TIPS to get the perfect EXPOSURE | Luminosity explained

a big thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this week's video so in this video i'm going to give you seven ways to master light in your photography morning everybody i've got a standing desk so it goes up and down so hopefully that's going to help my back a little bit although i do struggle with standing as well as sitting walking is fine so in this video what i want to do is i want to go through light luminosity monitor brightness exposure levels all the sort of things that you need to get that final image correct and how you manage light in your final image you know looking at those shadows those bright areas how to creatively control those and how it can make such a big difference to your photography so for instance if you look at this image here then this is a very duo-toned image that's quite sort of subdued and um you know it hasn't got any whites believe it or not or any blacks in the image and we'll talk about that in a little bit more detail and i'll give some examples of other types of images and how you can create them and it's all about creativity in your photography okay so before we start you need to make sure your monitor is calibrated i use a spider 5 pro to calibrate mine and that's important from a color perspective but it's also important to get the brightness right now what i find is that the default values in this um are just a little bit too bright so i i sort of dim it down a little bit more on my imac it's usually between sort of five and seven bars at the bottom which you'll probably find seems quite dark but depending on the environment you're in if you're in a bright environment you probably want your monitor just a slight bit brighter if you're in a dark environment you want it a little bit darker but if you don't get that right then obviously all the other things aren't going to work quite right either and what you'll end up doing is producing dark images if you want it just too bright because everyone else will see them in and or if you try and print them then they'll look really dark as well let's talk about the first two points so they're about contrasty or non-contrasty images so first of all contrasty images and how you expose them so if you look at this image here this is an image that's super contrasty and on here i exposed pretty much for the sun so this is before i used to do a lot of um exposure stacking and exposure blending i just wanted to take one shot i exposed just to the right of the sun a little bit just to make sure that those luminosity levels were right and i didn't worry too much about blowing the sun out and that worked okay i didn't need to bring the shadows out of the tree so much and it worked fine but more recently in the last sort of five or six years i've done a lot more exposure blending and make sure i bracket those exposures and to do that then if you look at this image you can see that to get this image i've blended together three images because it's a really contrasty image you can see here that this dark image is good for the sky i get the detail in the sky but it's not great for the foreground and even those cliffs in the background but the second and third bring out some of those details and then what you can do really easily in lightroom is just do a hdr of them blend them together and then you've just got a wider histogram more dynamic range to work with so when you edit it you can get something that looks a bit more like this knowing that you've not blown out anything there's still a little bit of detail in those highlights which i think is really good i don't worry too much about that if it's the sun in the highlights but if it's a bit of um sun hitting cloud i don't want the cloud to be burnt out so that's that's the basics for contrasty images try and do a hdr and do multiple exposures in your camera the the next thing is um for less contrasty images now the thing you should always be doing is exposing to the right i explained it in a video here so your histogram should be pushed as far to the right as possible but without blowing out your highlights and when you're using shooting a less contrasty scene it's quite often the case that you underexpose the image because you feel like your histogram has got lots of leeway on the left and right so you plunk it in the middle thinking well that's going to be a good exposure but actually it's not what you want to try and do is expose to the right even with that um shot it doesn't matter what the ultimate image is going to look like you just want to make sure that you get the best information possible in that image so in this one for instance this dark one was underexposed and this light one was perfectly exposed you can see at the histogram here i've pushed it as far to the right as possible and then what i can do on that one is i can pull out the shadow detail so in the ultimate edit where i pull out some of those pinks in the sky and the shadow it works so much better whereas in the dark version i didn't have quite as much information because in the shadow area of the histogram there's not as much information so that brings me on to the third thing which is don't get caught out by the highlights when you're exposing your images it's quite often the case if you only got small highlights in in the image or even if you've got a big highlight and you just forget about exposure bracketing then you you can get get caught out quite easily and and end up not having the data to be able to edit it later um and if you look and i did this when i was in madeira in last week's video in fact you saw the sky the sun there um was overexposed now a lot of people pointed out that it didn't really matter because i i blended in the lights my shot with the sort of glow of the sun but what i would have liked to do was just darken that down a little bit and not have a round sun but have a glow starting from a smaller point not much smaller but just a little bit smaller but because i didn't have any detail in that sun area i couldn't do that but where you find that happens even more is on things like um tree branches or if you shoot your pet maybe like pebbles her fur because it's white gets blown out so you've just got to be careful that you just watch those edges the edge of clouds is a good example you know you don't want to be blowing out the edges of a cloud and sometimes on the histogram you can't see that because it looks like you've got lots of room but actually a highlight is just missing off the right right hand side of the histogram so this is a good example here um of a silver birch this is a a photo that's going to be in my new book woodlands which will be on pre-order in about a week so if you're not signed up to my newsletter there's a link below and i'll be sending all the information on how to pre-order to the people that are signed up to my newsletter first so if you want to get a copy of woodlands when it comes out assign the number copy then the link below sign up to my newsletter and you'll get an email so this is one of the images from woodlands and you can see that i was really careful on this silver birch here i've done it so many times before where i've shot silver birch and just that edge just hasn't um quite got the detail i've blown it out a little bit because you can't quite see it on the histogram but on this one it's worked perfectly okay the fourth one getting more into the edit of the image what you can do with the edit and luminosity values in your shots i i can't stress just how important luminosity values are in your shots and what i mean by that is how you take that data that you've got in a histogram hopefully you've got nothing blown out nothing too dark in the image that you can't pull out the shadows and you can do amazing things with it and that's where your creativity starts and everyone's going to do different things here you only have to look at my raw challenge that we did um not too long ago and you know you could see all the range of images the creativity is good but there's some basic things that i think you probably need to look for and they're things like um the luminosity value of the sky compared to the the foreground you know quite often um it's the sky that's the brightest element in in the image um not always the case but most of the time the there's going to be some element in the sky that's going to be the brightest part and what you don't want to do is over brighten the foreground so it just looks odd so this is a good example here of this aurora and this was in norway on a beach and in norway it was absolutely amazing and we got this perfect bit of the aurora here with the um snow now i could easily just brighten that snow up a little bit more but it just wouldn't look right you know it was night time it's got to look dark so there's a temptation you look at the histogram i could just push it a little bit further that way you don't want to do that another good example is this one here from iceland where again that foreground it was just before sunrise i didn't want that foreground to get too bright so all i've done here is just lightened the highlights in the foreground but kept the dark tones dark and it's like it's understanding those luminosities that's really important and you can create tension and drama by not increasing the shadows in your images if you're really careful so if you look at this shot here this was a shot that i took in the pharaoh islands and there was this amazing light some of the best light that i've ever seen in the background i definitely said it doesn't get better than this and um you can see that the side of the mountains i've not brought out the shadow detail much because i wanted that dark feel to the image i had the data for that creative control to do what i wanted but i didn't want to pull out um too much brightness in in those areas because i wanted that eye to lead through to those bright areas in the image where the sun was coming through and then you know the counter argument is is the case as well you don't want to darken the sky if it doesn't feel like it's a sky that can be darkened too much so this is a good example um i was out walking with pebbles and there's a really nice i've just hand holding there's some nice light on this on the clouds and um it was that sort of quite morning sort of um it just made you feel happy light i suppose is a good way of explaining it i didn't want to darken that down too much now there's a temptation to darken it but you can see if i darken that sky too much it's just not going to work um similarly if i lighten the foreground too much it's not going to work you've got to get that balance between the sky the mid ground and the foreground that just works that just makes the viewer think that's real it's really important that whereas this image here is is an image that can have the sky darkened a little bit more it's got that moodiness to it so by darkening the sky in this image i've created um more of a ability for the eye to go through down this wall to where the light is hitting the mountain in the distance and i'm creating a funnel for that light to come through and hit that mountain um and because i had the creative control from this image because i um stacked it it's an exposure stack it worked really well and i could just pull up the highlights where i wanted to that was a noise from my beast of a printer here i don't know it's decided to switch off i've just been printing on it and some prints for my wall actually and it's suddenly just decides to switch off and it's taken the moment when i'm recording to do that hopefully you didn't hear it so the next thing is understanding the blacks and whites in your image so a black doesn't have to be true black and a white doesn't have to be true white and some people get that wrong they'll get their histogram and they'll expand it as much as possible by increasing the contrast but sometimes you don't want that and i've got some images here to explain that so the first one is just a cow um i've got cows that go behind my field here i was walking again with pebbles this cow walked past and i just took this shot it's just a snapshot but this is an example where i don't think having a true black so it works very well in the image because having it really black creates a different atmosphere to the image i like just that sort of softness to it it also means it look it creates a more mysterious feel to it because it was a little bit misty very similar to this one here which was a shot that i took when i was um looking at the nikon z5 and i was out in the lake district what an amazing morning but again it's a temptation to just add contrast to this image and you can see it just doesn't create the right look to it i want those blacks to be muted black so i want them to be not quite true black and you can do that in a number of ways you can just do that by messing with the curves tool or just the black slider um but i think it's important to to get that right similarly with this one here again i didn't want any blacks it was misty and i wanted to create that atmospheric look in the image but this one of a silhouette of i think it's i think it's andy again he gets in all my photos so this is a silhouette of andy um probably taken about the same time i took one from the other week but you can see that that i want that those blacks to be black because i want it to be a silhouette and that's really important in this image and then finally this sun tree one here again there's a temptation to make that tree totally black but by just bringing in that black back a little bit you know really helped this this image and create a more mysterious image this is some tree with the sun in a slightly different position where i've just moved around a little bit um it's not the main sun tree image with the sun the tree hugging the sun but yeah i quite like that one as well so whites in the image um don't have to be true white so this is a good example um here that i just showed you so that you know this is not this is not there's no whites in this image it almost looks white there but it isn't it isn't white um so even though it's snow it doesn't mean it has to be white because you want some texture in it and shadow it detail in it so ultimately you've got to have some darker cones tones to be able to produce that and then again on this image here uh where it's misty on on rydal water you can see that having just i actually toned the mist a little bit just to tone in the autumn colors into the image here and you can see that just how um that's made a very mysterious image and i think not by having a true white helps just as much as not having a two true black and in this image i don't have a true white or a true black and in fact the histogram is just in the middle um so don't think you have to stretch out that histogram to either sides you just don't i find quite a lot when i'm shooting shots like this so this was this is another shot that's going to be in the woodlands book um you know that there's not actually a true white or a true black in this and when i'm shooting woodlands it's quite often misty and you can create a very moody mysterious atmosphere just by you know just lifting those blacks a little bit and you know just darkening those whites a little bit it can help you've got to be careful how you do that and often the curve tool can really help that and i did i did a tutorial actually not too long ago on the curve tool i'll link it here which i think is very useful the final thing i want to mention is just how important creativity in all this is there really is isn't a right and a wrong there's just things to look for you know look for those foregrounds that look brighter than the sky look for where the tonal values if you just change those tonal values and the light and dark within an image how it can change the look and feel of an image so if you look at this image here from yosemite you know if i lighten that foreground a little bit or just create a little bit more contrast in that foreground or reduce the contrast in that foreground i should say mid-ground that's el capitan then that changes the dynamics of this image quite significantly and by changing the luminosity values throughout your image can really change the mood the feeling and actually the emotion that you're trying to portray in your photography so really think about that have a go with it and i'd love to know your thoughts as well you know drop them in the comments have you got any ideas or questions about luminosity or exposure or monitor brightness or anything like that i'll hang out in the comments on um in the morning and um hopefully i'll be able to answer some of those questions i want to say thanks to squarespace for sponsoring this week's episode um squarespace are a fantastic sponsor and also a fantastic tool for photographers you know if you're looking for a website if you're looking to share your images online then go and have a look at squarespace and maybe build a website with squarespace you can try it to begin with and if you're ready to go forward with it and launch it if you're happy with it then you can get 10 off by using offer code nigel or go to forward slash nigel thanks ever so much for watching me this week i hope you found that useful luminosity is something that i think is really important with photography and it just might take your photos to that next level so go and give it a try until next sunday bye just wanna watch the stars

Channel: Nigel Danson

Views: 57,808

Rating: 4.9771676 out of 5

Keywords: photography, landscape photography, exposure, camera settings, photography exposure, shutter speed, light, lightroom, editing, nigel danson, nigel danson photography

Id: xh-wp4dF8_w

Length: 18min 11sec (1091 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021