Thread: Question and one for CC

Hi ladies,

I took the camera with me when we went on a walk yesterday afternoon to practice a little bit. We are having a really weird winter with very warm temperatures and no snow! We usually have at least 3 feet by November that stays until June, but I can see all the grass in my yard! It's crazy.

But we still have really short days (6.5 hours of daylight) so Saturday is the only day I can really get out during the daytime.

My question is how do you not blow the sky when it's really blah and overcast outside? I took some pictures of DD with DH and the sky just looks bright white in almost all of them.

1/320
f/4.0
ISO 800


1/320
f/3.5
ISO 800



This next one I was actually really happy with how it turned out. If you have any advice on how to improve it, I would appreciate it. I think DD is OOF, but I was using auto focus (because I feel like I have my hands full right now just working on the exposure) and I think it's set to the one point auto focus. I need to read my manual and figure out how to change that.

1/100
f/5.6
ISO 800

*****lurker*****
So I know nothing about nothing, but I really liked the second one, your DD really looks sharp to me and I like that you can only see DH's profile. As for your technical question, I have no idea, but I did want to say that your pics are really neat.

in my experience if you want to capture the sky, you expose for the sky, if you want properly exposed faces, you expose for them. I have yet to find a way to capture both really well. I know there are tricks you can do in post processing to bring out faces more if you do expose for the sky, but we're talking about two totally different brightnesses of light, so i think it's not very plausible to 'properly' expose both.

Overcast skies are hard. It's really hard not to "blow" it. I read up on exposing the sky properly recently, and came to the conclusion that you need to make sure you're shooting at the right time of day, which is in the golden hour (1-2 hours before sunset, or after sunrise). It also really matters where you place your subject in relation to the sun. Here are a couple of examples:

In this one, the sky is a nice blue. This was probably 20 minutes before sunset. The sun is behind my back.
(I want to include my settings so you can get a feel for what to do yourself.)
1/400 f/2.5 ISO 200


Now, in this one the sun is a little more off to the side, and you can tell where it is by the light on his back. The sky is blown.
Same settings, but a completely different look to the sky.


So, basically, watch the time of day, and the placement of the sun. In the second one, I could have exposed the sky as well, if I would have had an off camera flash on them. Maybe even if I used a reflector, but I'm not positive on that one, since I've never used one before. I hope that helps!

ETA: I wanted to add that you could also get the sky exposed if you do a silhouette, sorta like the one in my siggy. You'll have underexposed subjects and an exposed sky.

Also, join ILP and take a look at this thread: http://ilovephotography.com/forums/i...opic=488465&hl

Laura Morita gave some tips with examples of her fab sky shots.

Great post Stephanie. I have yet to learn how to expose the sky correctly. I think it's something you have to study on and learn.

Originally Posted by lmh101979

*****lurker*****
So I know nothing about nothing, but I really liked the second one, your DD really looks sharp to me and I like that you can only see DH's profile. As for your technical question, I have no idea, but I did want to say that your pics are really neat.

Thanks.

Thanks for the link. Some great advice, and simple enough that I can understand most of it.

Cute pictures, I think the CC already provided is great.