Photo Safaris By Region AFRICA - Botswana Wildlife - Madagascar - Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya ANTARCTICA - Ultimate Antarctica ASIA - Essential China—Iconic Landmarks & Landscapes - India—Rajasthan & Puskar Fair - Japan's Winter Wildlife - Laos & Vietnam - Mongolia—The Golden Eagle Festival EUROPE - Best of the Greek Isles - Eclectic Holland - Finland's Arctic Wildlife - Turkey—Continental Crossroads - Tuscany - White Horses of France's Camargue NORTH AMERICA - Alaska Overland - Aurora Borealis—Fairbanks, Alaska - Bald Eagles of the Chilkat River, Alaska - Bosque del Apache & White Sands, New Mexico - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Summer - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Autumn - Colorado Fall Colors - Denali National Park in Autumn - Exploring Lake Powell - Florida Birds—Best of the West - Grand Canyon at Havasu Falls - Great Smoky Mountains - Horses & Icons of the Wild West - Humpback Whales of Alaska's Inside Passage - Mexico's Colonial Heartland - Monument Valley & Slot Canyons - Nova Scotia—Photo Tour for Women - Olympic National Park, Washington - Predatory Animals of North America - Springtime in Callaway Gardens, Georgia - Ultimate Wolves - Ultimate Yellowstone - Washington's Palouse Country - World's Best Raptor Shoot - Yellowstone & Grand Tetons in Autumn - Nature & Digital Photography Seminars with John Shaw PACIFICA - Midway Atoll SOUTH & CENTRAL AMERICA - Galápagos - Patagonia's Mountain Landscapes - Ultimate Dolphins Wildlife Models Shoot - Wildlife of Brazil's Pantanal Photo Safaris By Date JANUARY - Ultimate Wolves - Nature & Digital Photography Seminars with John Shaw, Dallas, TX & Raleigh, NC - Ultimate Yellowstone FEBRUARY - Japan's Winter Wildlife MARCH - Florida Birds—Best of the West - Nature & Digital Photography Seminars with John Shaw, Phoenix, AZ & Boston, MA - Midway Atoll - Aurora Borealis—Fairbanks, Alaska - Monument Valley & Slot Canyons - White Horses of France's Camargue APRIL - Springtime in Callaway Gardens, Georgia - Galápagos - Finland's Arctic Wildlife - Patagonia's Mountain Landscapes - Eclectic Holland - Great Smoky Mountains - Grand Canyon at Havasu Falls - Mexico's Colonial Heartland MAY - Wildlife of Brazil's Pantanal - Turkey—Continental Crossroads - Ultimate Dolphins Wildlife Models Shoot - Best of the Greek Isles - Tuscany JUNE - Washington's Palouse Country - Predatory Animals of North America JULY - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Summer - Olympic National Park, Washington AUGUST - Washington's Palouse Country - Humpback Whales of Alaska's Inside Passage SEPTEMBER - Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya - Denali National Park in Autumn - Alaska Overland - Essential China—Iconic Landmarks & Landscapes - Brown Bears of Katmai National Park in Autumn - Madagascar - Yellowstone & Grand Tetons in Autumn - Botswana Wildlife - Colorado Fall Colors - Predatory Animals of North America - Horses & Icons of the Wild West - Mongolia—The Golden Eagle Festival OCTOBER - Exploring Lake Powell - World's Best Raptor Shoot - Nova Scotia—Photo Tour for Women - India—Rajasthan & Puskar Fair NOVEMBER - Laos & Vietnam - Ultimate Antarctica - Bald Eagles of the Chilkat River, Alaska DECEMBER - Bosque del Apache & White Sands, New Mexico

		John Shaw Nature & Digital Photography Workshops Click here for locations and dates Mexico's Colonial Heartland March 17–24, 2007 Horses and Icons of the Wild West August 26–September 1, 2007 Masai Mara Wildlife Reserve, Kenya September 7–21, 2007 Australia Wildlife November 1–20, 2007 Ive recently received several E-mails asking about photographing subjects silhouetted against a light background. Such photos are actually extremely simple to do, if you deal with two major problems: correctly exposing the film and watching for tonal merges. Many photographers have trouble with silhouetted subjects because they try to meter the scene just as they have composed it, especially when their cameras are set to an auto exposure mode using matrix metering. The meter reads all the dark area in the frame and tries to compensate the exposure. All too often the result is an overexposed photo with the light areas of the scene burned out. The solution is to change your working methods. First set your camera to the manual exposure mode and change the metering pattern to spot metering. (About 90% of the time I work in manual exposure/spot, regardless of the subject Im photographing. I want to be in charge of my photography and not let the camera make all the decisions.) You now need to be careful in choosing the correct area of the scene to meter, and then work in stop increments to place that area as the tone you want it to appear on film. Remember, you can make any portion of your picture appear as any tone you want it to be. You are not recording the "reality" of the scene you see, since reality and photography are two different worlds. What you want to ask yourself is not "What tone is this?" but rather "What tone do I want to record this as?" Slide film can record detail in a spread of five stops, as Ive discussed in previous columns. A spot meter reading will give you the base exposure values to use in order to render the subject you metered as a medium tone, regardless of what the metered areas tonality is in reality. Open up one stop from this meter reading and that subject will record on film as a "light" tonality. Open up two stops and you get an "extremely light" recording. Stop down one stop and it will be "dark." Stop down two stops and it will be "extremely dark." So, when working a silhouette situation, the first order of business is not to meter the final composition. Instead, aim your spot meter at a clear portion of the background sky. (If the sun is in your frame, make sure you dont try to meter it!) This will be your base meter reading, your starting point. If you shoot at that exposure value; then that particular portion of the sky will be rendered as a medium tone in your photo. But you will rarely want to photograph with this medium tone placement, and Ill explain why in just a moment. The best solutionand the way I work silhouettes almost all the timeis to place the background one stop lighter than medium by adding one stop of light to your base meter reading. This works particularly well when silhouetting a subject against the morning or evening sky. Suppose you want to silhouette some trees against a beautiful twilight sky just after sunset. Find your shooting position, determine your focal length, and then aim your camera at the open sky slightly above the horizon and meter this area. Lets assume your meter says 1/30 second at f/11. Re-compose the scene exactly as you want it to appear, and then open up the exposure by one stop to 1/15 second at f/11. By doing this you ensure that the trees silhouetted in the foreground do not disappear tonally into the sky. If you make the sky "medium" by shooting at the direct meter reading your silhouette wont show up nearly as well. This is particularly true when youre working silhouetted subjects using a wide-angle lens. When shooting silhouettes you are almost always working on axis with the light source; youre shooting against the brightest part of the sky. Since a wide-angle lens encompasses such a wide angle of view, the edges of the frame will be much darker than the center portion since they are off-axis to the light source. Place the background sky as a medium and your silhouetted objects will disappear into the background. Place the background as "light" and the silhouette will show up better. Dont worry about the foreground becoming lighter. You can easily predict exactly how it will appear. Heres the process: Meter the background sky and place it as a "light" tone by opening up one stop from your base meter reading. Now swing your camera down to the foreground and take another meter reading. Count how many stops there are between the two meter readings. Since there is less light on the foreground, it will appear that many stops darker than the sky. For example, lets go back to those trees silhouetted against the twilight sky. Youre going to actually shoot at an exposure of 1/15 second at f/11 to make the sky "light." Now meter the foreground (which is exactly the same as metering the side of the trees facing you since both are receiving the same amount of light). The meter now says 2 seconds at f/11. How many stops are there between 1/8 second and 2 seconds? Five. Expose the sky as a "light" tone and the foreground (the trees, that is) will be five stops darker in tonality, which drops the trees off the bottom of the tonal scale. They will record as pure black. Lets try a simple silhouette, soap tree yucca against the twilight sky from White Sands National Monument, done with an 80-200mm lens. Heres the shot: Heres where I spot metered the scene: Working with your camera set in the manual exposure mode and spot metering is the easiest way to photograph silhouettes as you can precisely meter one specific area, set the exposure, then let go of the camera and lens. While you can work with auto exposure and other metering patternssetting the AE compensation to a +1 and holding it lockedwhy do things the hard way when the easy way is so much simpler? Heres a photo of Balanced Rock in Arches National Park: So where did I spot meter this composition? I spot metered at the arrow location and opened up one stop. Watch out for tonal merges, where the silhouetted subjects appear to overlap into one. We have three-dimensional vision, but film has only two. We know that those silhouettes are really of several subjects, but film does not. When you overlap silhouettes they blend into one giant subject. Pick your camera position carefully to avoid as many merging areas as possible. For example, here is a photo of ocotillo and saguaro cactus in the Arizona desert: Heres how I spot metered this scene: And here are the potential merge areas that I had to consider: Lets look at another example, a ghost gum at the Devils Marbles in the Australian Outback: Heres where I spot metered and opened up: And here are all the potential merges that I avoided by careful camera positioning: Silhouettes are easy to photograph if you follow the steps Ive outlined below: 1. Set your camera to manual exposure and spot metering. 2. Meter what will be a bright area in the background and open up one stop. 3. Position your camera to avoid tonal merges. Have fun!

	Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc. P.O. Box 655, Vashon Island, Washington USA 98070 Phone: (206) 463-5383   Fax: (206) 463-5484    Email: info@photosafaris.com Copyright © 2008, Joseph Van Os Photo Safaris, Inc.