Sunrise Photography: Getting the Light Right
To get the light right in your photograph, you need to vary the exposure. This is quite easy to do. By “Vary the Exposure” I mean, “How to get darker and lighter photographs” when taking sunrise photographs.
Most of us have cameras with automatic built-in through-the-lens exposure meters. By this I mean that most of us have cameras that allow us to take photographs without having to manually adjust settings on the camera. It just all happens automatically for us.
However, you may find it very frustrating when you take a sunrise photograph and discover that the photograph you see displayed on the viewing screen on the back of the camera does not look anything like the image of the sunrise you see with your eye. It may be too dark or too light.
The reason for this is that the camera’s exposure meter is usually set to make its light measurement at the center of the viewing screen. Therefore, if, when you’re framing up the picture on the viewing screen, you put the bright sun in the center of the viewing screen, the exposure meter will think the whole picture is very, very bright or even too bright. Your photograph will be very dark.
If, when you’re framing up the picture, you have the foreground, which is dark, in the center of the viewing screen, the exposure meter will think the whole picture is very, very dark. Therefore, the camera will overcompensate and will lighten the dark foreground. You will get a very light photograph.
Knowing this, you can play with the exposure of your sunrises by centering the image at different places. You can make dark, light, and medium light-intensity photographs by changing the place where you center the image.
Copyright 2008 Carol Chapman
