outdoor photography

Royal Tern I'm teaching at a Camera Club tonight, and the topic will be exposure compensation for wildlife photography.  I wrote a three page handout and also put together a PowerPoint presentation for tonight.  I thought some of you may want to see these, so I'm including a couple links to them here: Lesson Handouts Lesson PowerPoint Feel free to download and use these for your own personal use.  Please do not use them for any other purpose without permission.

Snowy Egret Yesterday when I was at Jetty Park I came across a Little Blue Heron and Snowy Egret walking along the dark rocks that lined the inlet.  And the photos made me decide to do a post about exposure compensation.  How you set your exposure compensation depends in part on the metering method you use. Here are two of the more common metering methods for shooting wildlife: Spot Metering: This metering method acquires exposure values from the center "spot" of the frame.  In this method, you can put your subject in the center and adjust your exposure to make sure your subject is exposed properly.This is a good way to work, but I don't normally use it, since it's often hard to keep my subject in the center of the frame. Matrix/Evaluative Metering:  This metering method acquires exposure values from throughout the frame.  To use exposure compensation, you have to make judgments about the whole scene and adjust accordingly.  It is therefore somewha...

Great Egret This past Saturday I was at Merritt Island; I went there mostly to look for shorebirds, but I couldn't resist spending some time photographing this Great Egret.  He was perched in the trees by the road, and he was too close for me to get more than his head in the frame.  But then he took off, and he flew circles around me at least a couple times before he settled on another place to perch. Great Egret Normally when shooting birds in flight, I overexpose because the sky is often so bright that I would end up with  the bird being way too dark.  But with white birds like Great Egrets I find that I often need to underexpose a little, especially if the wings are receiving direct sunlight.  With these photos, the sun was high in the sky, and the birds face was cast in shadow.  To make matters worse, when birds are flying, what's receiving direct sunlight changes depending on whether the bird's wings are up and down.  Here, though, even ...

Boat-tailed Grackle When  photographers begin to learn about exposure compensation, they are usually taught to "expose for the highlights."  That is, look for the brightest part of the frame, and set your exposure to put that where you want it.  For a sunrise, I usually spot meter off a bright part of the sky near the horizon and set my exposure compensation to +1-1/3 stop (or perhaps a little more). Great Egret But with bird photography, I find this is insufficient advice for two reasons: Using your spot meter while shooting birds is impractical.  For example, when shooting a bird in flight, the sky will likely be the brightest part of the photograph, and getting the sky right may make the bird all wrong.  And moving birds have a tendency not to care whether or not they are in the part of the frame where your spot meter is collecting data. Your main concern most of the time (shooting bird silhouettes is an obvious exception), you are far more conc...