Rialto Beach
Art Wolfe once said something like, “The mark of a professional photographer is that he knows when not to shoot.” Mostly he meant that an experienced photographer knows when the light is really not going to create a good photograph. You can also tell a beginning photographer’s photos by the lack of attention to the backgrounds.
The backgrounds are still important, and it is nice to have warm, soft light, but advances in Photoshop, especially HDR, make it now much more forgiving to shoot in marginal light. I find myself shooting bracketed exposures in those situations, just in case. Remember, Art said those words in the days of film.
The above photo is the latest one to surprise me. It was an overcast Washington coast morning. I had hiked a mile down the beach to get to this spot to shoot tide pools on my last morning, and wasn’t coming back, otherwise I would have made a mental note of the composition and returned when the light was better.
I shot a five exposure bracket, knowing that I wouldn’t like the results of straightforward post-processing of a single frame because of the flat, gray light. When I ran it through Photomatix at home I loved the result. I wasn’t expecting anything great at all.
I don’t habitually make HDR’s, but when I know the light is not going to create anything stunning in a single frame, but I love the composition, I’ll shoot a bracketed burst. It doesn’t always result in anything useable, but it is fairly quick and easy to go from Lightroom to Photomatix and back again to see what you may have.
Lake-side chair_Lake Quinault
My self-assignment with the chair was to make a photograph that made the viewer really, really wish they were in that chair right now. It was sunset, it was a warm summer evening. Never mind about the damned mosquitos. This was a single frame. I actually made an HDR, but discovered HDR does not know what to do with ripples in water and makes a mess of it.
Lake Quinault Lodge
Here is the view looking the other way. Now do you wish you were there?
Decent Exposure 