Deer - C&C please

[davidedric]

One more - given your other thread about backlighting, here's a baby of the species....

[Brownbear]

Beautiful image Dave. Thank you for sharing.

I see that if one can manage to expose correctly for back-lighting it makes for an extra special image with beautiful lighting. I can also see that the rim lighting is distinct in your photo. Thank you. Very helpful.

[davidedric]

A confession. I had to up the shadows a long way in Lightroom to bring out the coat details.

[Brownbear]

Dave, Thank you so much for letting me know about the shadows... As I'm working on my editing skills it is very helpful for me to know.

[Mike Buckley]

Think of the exposure this way, Christina: Dave exposed to achieve the bright areas that he wanted. Doing so resulted in underexposed shadow areas, which will always happen unless there is snow or something similar reflecting the light onto the side of the deer that was not directly lit. (Remember that in a back lit subject, the only part of the subject that is directly lit is the rear side.)

If the subject had been static, Dave could have made several exposures and used HDR software or combined the best parts of each exposure into one file. The moving deer didn't allow for that, so his only alternative was to brighten the shadow areas during post-processing.

[Brownbear]

Hi Mike,

Thank you for the explanation. I am still confused about back lit... It sounds like you are saying that if something is truly back lit then the front part of it would be in shadows, ie; in this case the front of Dave's Elk.. therefore the shadows need to be lightened on the front of the elk in post processing.

If that is truly the case my leaf which you said was not back lit (even though I could see a rim around the edges) was truly not back lit because I did not have to lighten the leaves... or is it that leaves are kind of translucent when the sun shines through them the shadows do not need to be lightened?

Also Steve advised that if one used spot metering and pushed the exposure to the far right, it was possible to expose for the back-lit subject, and in the case of Dave's elk, if he had chose this option the background would have been blown, ie; white instead of grass. Correct? And while on the subject it would have also turned out to be a high key photo?

So my choices are to lighten shadows, or expose for the subject and blow the background, or learn how to do HDR?

And the reason we take backlit photos is for either the beautiful light in the background, and around the subject at the expense of dark shadows, OR we blow the beautiful light in the background to get that rim lighting. I think that is correct?

Thank you.

[Mike Buckley]

It sounds like you are saying that if something is truly back lit then the front part of it would be in shadows]

Yes. By definition, the subject is being directly lit from the back and is called back lit for that reason. When an opaque subject is directly lit from the back, its front will always be in shadow unless another light source directly lights the front or unless something reflects the back lighting onto the front.

or is it that leaves are kind of translucent when the sun shines through them the shadows do not need to be lightened?

Close but not quite right. When the back lit subject is sufficiently translucent relative to the strength of the light source, there will be few or no shadows. So, the front of the subject may not need to be lightened.

Also Steve advised that if one used spot metering and pushed the exposure to the far right, it was possible to expose for the back-lit subject, and in the case of Dave's elk, if he had chose this option the background would have been blown

No. The whole point of exposing to the right is to push the exposure as far as you can in that direction though without losing too much detail in the highlights. In Dave's photo, he lost the detail in the rim lighting (which I think looks great) but that's because there is no detail in that kind of direct light. He lost very little if any detail in the background grass. In other words, Dave maintained detail where it was important for him to do so as he envisioned the image.

Review the histogram of Dave's image as a good example of what Steve suggested to do and that Dave did. If you have learned how to hover an eye dropper over the image while a curve tool is open, you can see that the rim light is one of the brightest tones of the image but that there are some brighter tones in the specular highlights in the grass.

OR we blow the beautiful light in the background to get that rim lighting.

No. Dave's photo is a great example of achieving very nice rim lighting without blowing too much of the bright background.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Mike. Your explanations are great.


One last question, and that is how can I see the histogram in Dave's photo?

[Mike Buckley]

Download his image to your computer. To do that, right click the photo and look for the pertinent command. Open the image in Lightroom or whatever software you want to use that displays the histogram.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Mike.

[Cogito]

A lot of sound advice here. Now for my 2c worth. When your subject is backlit - i.e. you're pointing your camera towards the sun (or light source) use spot metering. Indeed it wouldn't be a bad thing to set your camera to spot metering permanently. I don't know what equipment you're using but I'm sure it probably has shutter priority as well as aperture priority. If so, shutter priority will let you set the shutter speed. With a "moving" deer, you probably need a minimum of 1/500th sec. But I don't know what lens you have. So set your shutter speed and ISO so as to make sure the camera will actually fire. Maybe also try multiple exposures? Most cameras allow 3 or 5 shots at the actual exposure plus or minus 1/3 or 1/2 stop either side. But then it's up to you and your PP skills. Both your and Davidedric's shots can be "sharpened". As much as you like! Also, since you use Lightroom, upping the clarity and vibrance give a sharpening effect...
With your and Davidedric's permission........

P.S. You may have to forgive the colour of the images, but here we got hit by lightning a couple of weeks ago and it destroyed my monitor so I don't know if my new monitor is set up correctly yet.....

[Brownbear]

Hi Tony,

Thank you for sharing such great advice, and for taking the time to demonstrate how much one can sharpen an image.

I have a good camera (Nikon D7100) and a good lens, which will do everything you've recommended. This deer was one of the first photos I took with my new camera. It was very early in the morning when I spotted some deer at the edge of the forest, so I headed outside with just one sip of coffee in me. I managed to get close to this particular deer but I didn't have enough time to evaluate my settings before he fled. (I did manage a few shots but I only posted one so I could learn about back-lighting)

I am just now starting to get comfortable with spot metering and learning my way around Lightroom.

One day I will post a nice photo of a back-lit deer for you.

Thank you.

[Brownbear]

Tony,

I forgot to say that I'm sorry to hear about your monitor, and I hope your photos were all backed up. The edits look just a wee bit saturated/yellow to me but I think is better to test your colour with your own photos that are edited from scratch.

Thank you.

[davidedric]

My, this is turning into a long thread, but I do want to reply to Tony's comments.

I like to see how others re-work my images, so no problem at all. I think sharpening is largely a matter of taste, and I prefer to under- rather than over- , but there you go. To be fair (to myself ) I just posted these for Christina rather than as finished images for C&C, but pleased if they have been helpful.

However, what I really wanted to respond on is spot metering. In Christina's elk portrait, then I agree that spot metering would be good and at the least save a lot of pp, but that's because the background detail is unimportant and probably unwanted.

However, with the baby antelope I emphatically would not spot meter. There are already some blown highlights in the grass (I cloned out a few distracting ones around the animals feet) and if I'd exposed for the antelope the background would have been horribly blown. To re-create the image as my eyes saw it, I think it better, certainly much easier, to expose as I did and bring up the shadows. I am also a bit fanatical about showing animals in their environment

[Mike Buckley]

At the risk of being a complete bore, I just have to repeat a concept mostly because Christina is still learning the basics and I want to make sure that she doesn't get confused: It does not matter which kind of metering we use. We could "properly" capture any of the photos posted in this thread using any of the three metering methods and we could produce essentially the same exposure and histogram so long as we make the necessary in-camera adjustments after reviewing the histogram. If there is no time to make adjustments, experienced photographers could use whatever metering method they are most comfortable with and probably get an adequate exposure that at the least could be adjusted during post-processing.

[Brownbear]

Thank you Dave and Mike.. Truly appreciated.

Dave, I am also very appreciative that you chose to share your photos for me to learn about back lighting and spot metering.

Mike, thank you.