Birds in Snow ... A Potentially Viable Combination for Photographers ... and an Exposure Challenge for Sure!
Mourning Dove. Even a small amount of snow in your image is often enough to let the viewer know that the scene is one of "Winter."
Junco, male. I would have much preferred him looking towards the camera, but his profile and the snow made his portrait worthwhile nevertheless.
Is the Blue Jay not one of God's Great Works of Art?
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Snow and other extremely bright subjects fool camera light meters fairly consistently. Those meters base "correct" exposure readings on what's calibrated as 18% gray.
The short explanation ...
http://cajie.blogspot.com/2008/04/18-grey-card.html
But the camera's meter is actually a very basic piece of electronics. It simply assumes that the scene being recorded is made of 18% grey and computes the aperture/shutter speed combination based on that assumption.
But why 18% grey?, you may ask...
Good question. When camera manufacturers were designing light meters, they determined that generally, an "average" scene consists of 18% grey. They arrived at this conclusion by shooting wide variety of shots under different lighting combinations.
Of course, not every scene is 18% grey - which is where the camera meter gets fooled. For example, take a picture of a person in front of a white wall, and chances are that the wall will appear grey, instead of white. Now take the same person and place him in front of a black wall and the black wall will not look black at all. In fact, it will appear greyish.
And therein lies the problem. The camera meter wants everything to be grey; but our world is much more complex than that.
Probably not much help at first ... but look at it this way:
1) Pure White = 0%
2) Solid Black = 100%
If you were mixing paint (instead of light), if you began with a bucket of white paint (0% black) and slowly added black paint (100% black), when the paint became 18% gray, you'd see the "correct" brightness intensity your camera's light meter wants to use to give your photo the aperture/shutter speed combination that will avoid an underexposed (too dark) or overexposed (too light) image.
Life ain't that easy though! Some scenes have lots of contrast ... your eyes will deal with such scenes in many instances ... your camera will do so in fewer instances. Photographing scenes with high contrast will at times require a trade-off. If snow is your main subject, to keep it white and avoid your camera turning it gray, OVEREXPOSE to bring up the white.
If BIRDS in SNOW are your subject, since most birds are darker than the surrounding snow, if the bird is correctly exposed, the snow may be overexposed ... live with it ... it's more important to expose for the bird and let the snow appear without much nuanced detail.
All right ... enough technical stuff. Please spend a little time with this ... assimilate what you like ... I'll be back later with some Bird/Snow shots.
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A. Mac
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All right ... enough technical stuff. Please spend a little time with this ... assimilate what you like ... I'll be back later with some Bird/Snow shots.
See you then.
A. Mac
Great lesson Mac! Looking forward to the pics.
Question:
How much over exposure is enough?
With mostly snow in the viewfinder, anywhere from +2/3 f-stops and up in increments of +1/3. With digital, you can take multiple exposures ... no wasting film or waiting for processing. Sometimes, more that 1 full stop over is needed.
I will include some shots with explanations that work around the most difficult contrasts ... just came up with them today.
First three birds posted. More later.
Boy Mac,
That Jay is just beautiful. I have to say, that you couldn't get a more perfect shot!
I have more shots but there seems to be little interest.
I think you posted this once before, Mike (I've seen it a number of times); the photographer who took the shot later wrote that he regretted doing so in that it indicated he'd lost his sensitivity to human tragedy and had become too objective in terms of is work.
I remember reading that at least one war correspondent/photographer retired upon realizing that in getting his war photos, dead soldiers became compositional elements.
Thanks Randy,
I have a degree in biology and one of the field courses on the way to that degree, was ornithology. It was years ago (1964) ... I still remember a two-part final exam ... field identification of species (both visual and by song/call) and an anatomical segment as well.
I spend so much time in the woods, by streams and other bodies of water, that I get constant practice noting species.
True dat Mac!
What was shocking at one time, after a while we becomedesensitizedto.
Thanks Feronia,
I'll be posting more "snow" birds soon ... with some interesting new looks.
Another interesting effect of snow and clouds can be blue. I have only seen it twice when we lived in northern New Mexico. Most of the time the light is white or gray.
Thanks for the info.
Really nice Pic Steve! It's so nice to have another photographer here. Mac has a group. Maybe you guys should try to firm up meeting times. I bet you all would love it!
BTW we have live chat that is never used. By that I mean visual chat. That is what the "Tokbox Video Chat" tab is for.
Still on the road. Yikes Feo... I bet you can't wait to be in your own bed. (at least that is how I would feel).
Thanks Perrie. Most of my bird pictures are of hummers. You don't generally see them in the snow.
I love hummers, but we really don't get to many by my house. I live in a fly way, and they get spooked by the bigger birds.
I look forward to seeing more!
Welcome iarnoocon!
Good to see you here on NT.
Yup! The second shot is a male Junco.
I'll be posting the Second Birds/Snow article today.
Hello Steve,
Looking forward to those Hummingbird shots.