In this photos, http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=643386 , the range of tonality in this situation is really wide. If I open up the shutter further, that glowing green will be overexposed. In a typical dark mountain and bright sky situation, people would use graduated ND filter to narrow the range of tonality but the light in this photo is in the middle of the frame on the main subject itself. How do you solve this problem besides using Photoshop? Anyone out there who has seen and solved this before? I'd appreciate it.

-- Arthur Yeo (ayeo@acm.org), March 26, 2002

Answers

Arthur, the best advice I can offer is to go back under different conditions. Overcast skys will even out the contrast in this example. I think if you got lucky and had some thick fog it would work well with this subject. Short of combining multiple exposures in photoshop or learning how to control the weather I don't think there is too much else you can do.

-- Mark Meyer (Mark@photo-mark.com), March 26, 2002.

Reshooting in subdued light wouldn't give the same glowing quality to the log, I'd think. Hate to say it, but this is one shot where using slide film doesn't help; the exposure latitude is too limited for the contrast in this scene. Print film would do the trick.

-- Christian Deichert (torgophile@aol.com), March 28, 2002.

This is a tricky one.... First option is to use fill flash with a bouncher or diffuser. Second option is to diffuse the light by using a white/translucent fabric over the object....this would flatten the light. Third option is to use the reflector (such as Photoflex) to reflect the light to the dark area.

Anyone has a better solution? This is a challange. Thank you for sharing this kind of problem....we'll learn.

-- Poniman Mulijadi (pn_photo@yahoo.com), March 31, 2002.

Artificially controlling the light sounds like a viable solution. I guess I'd need to direct the light only at the dark areas but not the lighted parts of the log. Interesting suggestions. Thanks.

-- Arthur Yeo (ayeo@acm.org), March 31, 2002.

Arthur, Some good advice above, but I don't think anyone commented on your photoshop reference. In my mind, using photoshop wouldn't solve the problem. It would create an unobtainable picture or at least one you didn't KNOW was attainable. I personally try to avoid that use of photoshop - call me naive. :-) Rod

-- Rodney W. Sorensen (sorenser@mfldclin.edu), April 02, 2002.