To Manamo: Nature's Mosaic overexposure

[faganrodney]

Hi Marc,
Thanks for taking the time to critique my photo, it is valued.

I totally agree with your comment. There was a land formation off in the distance, that I would have liked to include. The photos with the horizon didn't bring out the effect of the rocks. It seems to get the effect of the rock that I was looking for overexposed the water. I could not crop the water as it made the photo have even less depth.

Again, thanks for taking the time.
Rodney

[Manamo]

Hello Rodney,
thanks for getting back to me like that. I tend to be very honnest and some member don't like it at all. So thank you for that.
There are a couple of ways to overcome those problems. First rule when you shoot digital is that there are more info in the shadow zones than in the highlights. It means that if a region is burnt out, well it is burnt out and there is nothing you can do about it. However, if you have a region with low light, you can still bring up the info and bring back to light things you were not able to see before playing with levels and curves. So, the take home message is: in case of doubt, always better to underexpose than to overexpose.
Second thing, does your camera shoot raw files? If yes, the option would be to take two different shots of the same image. One with the settings for the highlights(sky, sea, etc...) and one with the settings for the low light(rocks). Afterwards, once in your computer, many softwares can do the job for you. For example, in photoshop, you can combine the two raw images and so you have a picture that is well exposed in every regions.
Finally, the last option is to own photoshop(maybe some others do it though). In this software is a tool called shadows and highlights. With that tool, you use the first lesson I told you here:you set your exposure for the sky and sea. That will mke the rocks a bit underexposed but at least the sky is perfect. So you open this picture in photoshop, and under image-image adjustment, you will find the tool shadows and highlights. You play wih the cursors to find the right combination and there you go:D

It's funny because in your other pictures, you seem to master the light pretty well!

Hope that helps,

Marc

[faganrodney]

Thanks for the great amount of detail that you have given me. It is the best response that I have received to date. I will try some of the things that you mentioned. My PS was on my old computer (crashed), the new system does not have it yet as my disk has been scratched. So at the moment my post processing is Googles Picasa. Thanks Very Much. Rodney