Fail some more
Albert Pedrosa
Photo Mania
LESSON learned. Almost every time I go out for a shoot, I discover something to learn. Sometimes, it’s something I already knew but have forgotten. Work likes to be given a reminder at times. Maybe this time it stays in my head.
One time I was shooting fashion and the model was wearing a white outfit that for some reason was very reflective. The outfit immediately overexposed, while the model was still one full stop underexposed. The idea of just doing it in post processing was lurking in my mind.
I totally understand that the textile was different compared to skin in terms of reflectance. I tried moving the light to the sides to create more shadows in the textile and somehow balance the intensity of the strong highlights. Still a problem. I was still getting too much light from the fabric.
After half an hour of trying to figure out the right lighting setup, and when the studio started to have a life of its own, I decided to stop down by two-thirds of a stop and work out the exposure issue in the post. I decided to put my priorities on the outfit since the shoot was about the outfit anyway.
Stressed out about the light problem after the shoot and packing up my gear, I realized that I could have lifted the lights up and maybe used a gridded beauty dish. This way the light would fall first on the model’s face and start to fall off the fabric at a lower intensity. Some thoughts that you just have to try another day.
That night, I reviewed the shots in my computer and found out that the light was very much within range. I was confused that in my camera LCD, it was totally overexposed. It turned out that the culprit was the picture style settings in my camera.
In the previous outfit, I was trying to put more contrast to the image, so I edited my picture style. I did try to put it back to default at one time when trying to figure out the lighting problem, but I didn’t realize it could be just the Jpeg display in my camera.
The raw images were all underexposed, even the textile which looked good in the camera display. I was lucky I took some few overexposed shots for possible editing. Camera display can really confuse you in this particular scene.
It’s not always that camera display fools you, maybe just 90 percent of the time. Kidding aside, it’s more of understanding what your camera tells you from what you actually see. Tethering can be a hassle, but it sometimes justifies the extra mile. Keep on shooting, everyone!
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