Wondering what to do with daylight
Originally posted 17 March 2018
A couple of weeks ago, some of us from work participated in the Wellington Pride Parade. I didn't end up taking many photos in the end as I was with the float - not many chances to take photos of the other parade participants. But it turned out to be a great day for practicing nonetheless!
The day's main lesson is about lighting. Specifically when the light source is too bright on the subject.
The sun was quite intense before sunset with the surprising lack of cloud cover. I managed to expose the faces enough but the areas with direct sunlight are still too blown out for my liking. It was lucky that they were in the car's shadow enough for me to get a usable shot.
These girls were posing for a photo so I sneaked a photo in myself. This time the sun was behind me. Even with editing the light still looks a bit harsh. But it looks nice enough for me to keep.
This one was another tricky one to balance. The girls' faces in the shadow were okay, but the dude's face is overexposed. Not sure if I should have set the exposure on his face instead, then brighten up the girls' faces in editing. Don't know how that would turn out because I didn't think to take that shot at the time!
Also, so far you'll notice that I'm not as close to the subjects; I've had to crop in the images above. I'm still a bit uneasy about taking photos of other people despite it being a socially acceptable — if not expected! — situation. I'm working on it.
After the parade there were some speeches being made. I saw this cool dude with the light... tubes(?) hanging down his back (and an umbrella that lights up!)
It was about 8:30 pm so it was actually quite dark. The camera compensated and upped the exposure which meant the people and everything else were bright, but the individual lights were washed out.
So I set the exposure compensation to -1.3 (I think, I need to double check) and mostly nailed what I wanted to do! It doesn't help that the screen turned on at that instant but I think I actually like it more that way compared to what I imagine it would have been like with the screen off.
Jazz hands
After the parade we decided to go for a few drinks. We ended up at Hashigo Zake. Little did we know there was a jazz band performing that night, so we stuck around for a bit.
It was pretty dark in the place with only four ceiling lamps providing the lighting. My camera was struggling a bit in the dark as evidenced by the grainy noise in the picture. It tended to focus hunt quite a bit as well. To top it off, the lights themselves were quite bright up close. I found it a bit hard to expose the photo properly, but I did also forget to check the light metering settings. Something to remember for next time!
But, again, the hard part was not letting the lights wash out the lit areas without leaving the shadows too dark. I think I was getting more of the hang of it in the next few shots...
Still a long way to go in getting used to my camera settings in this kind of lighting, but I think I'm making some progress.
To cap off a great evening we ran into Darth Vader on the way home!
I'm pleased I managed to get a decent shot. From asking whether he minded if I took a photo to me putting my camera away, it was probably less than 10 seconds all up. I was trying to be polite and not inconvenience him too much so I just took a few shots really quickly. I didn't have too much time to fiddle around with the settings , framing, etc so it was quite lucky how it turned out.
All in all it was a great evening out. A lot of fun and some lessons to take away as well!