I expose for the shadow

For every photographer, light is everything. Without light we wouldn’t have photography. The essence of photography is capturing light. There is nothing new in these affirmations. Exposure is also as old as photography and how we expose will determine the outcome of the photo.

On the first photography workshop that I ever attended, I’ve learned something: to expose for the shadows. The workshop was on portraiture using natural light and it was held inside so the only available light was from the windows. It was explained to us why and how to ignore the highlights and instead to concentrate on exposing correctly on the shadows. The correct skin tone in the shadow was the message and the main thing that we had to concentrate on.

Later on my photography journey, I move to photographing rugby. Fast action, fast shutter speeds. All good until as photographer I had to shoot against the sun at midday. The result? All the players had dark faces. Thanks to technology in the digital camera, it is very easy to change the metering from “central average” to “spot metering”. By changing the metering and applying the rule of “shoot tight, crop tighter”, the players become “correctly exposed” and the highlight (if any) ignored. Nobody wants to see a beautiful sky with an underexposed rugby player.

Today I’m still using digital cameras but they fall into the second place. The first is taken by the film photography and especially black and white film. How does the film react to the light? It is well known that most b&w film like to be a tinny overexposed. Not all my film cameras have an integrated light meter so I have to adapt. My solution? I point the app on my phone to my own shadow, take a reading from that and dial it in the camera. Perfect exposure! Again, expose for the shadows.

I will leave with a couple of photos, all taken with my phone, photos that are not capturing the light but the shadows.

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