Resources for Photo Journalism class.
Fan Ho Wk 4
How does your camera meter light?
Your camera looks at everything in the scene and tries to average it all out to 18% grey. This can be a problem if you don’t have a lot of tonal contrast in a scene. For instance, if everything your camera is metering is white, white will look grey. If everything you meter is black, black will look grey. I asked you all to put your camera on spot metering mode. This works exceptionally well for Fan Ho type photography where you want to preserve the subject and not over or underexpose her. I am not a fan of changing back and forth to different metering options on your camera. If you stick to one, you tend to learn how best to use it. I like spot metering because it gives me more control.
Read more about different metering modes here: https://digital-photography-school.com/metering-modes-and-how-your-camera-meter-works/
Questions you will need to answer for the midterm about metering found in the article above:
What is exposure compensation?
What are the advantages of using spot metering or other types of metering?
What is 18% grey and why does your camera have more difficulty exposing images with less contrast?
Why learn the zone system for finding exposure?
I use the zone system all the time when I am looking at the scene and deciding how best to expose it. Even though I shoot RAW files and I edit, getting exposure as close to perfect in-camera as possible is important to me. The zone system is not super common for digital photographers, but it’s a tool I use to help my brain understand how the camera sees the world. As you could probably tell from me confusing the numbers last night, I don't qualify light as “zone 2” or “zone 4” instead, what I do, is I think what tones in this scene are 18% grey—so for instance Elia’s skin is zone 5 or close to 18% grey. If I had a large group of people in front of me, I would want to find something close to that perfect mid-tone to use to meter. Perhaps I have a group of people against a white wall with typical Norwegian skin. I’d know—based on the zone method—that I'm going to need to bump up my exposure to get a more accurate result. I don’t think I explained this well in class, so if you have any questions about it, please let me know!
Here is the article I would like you to read: https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/understanding-using-ansel-adams-zone-system--photo-5607?fbclid=IwAR39tRdq456vufhEz5LwSIADiDhLLoTo-SQy0RZeaYZ6zYLf8zWeTOpSbPc
Questions to answer for the midterm:
What is the average skin tone that would be good to meter off of? (The Native guy in the article has zone 5 skin tones.)
Study the chart “Placing Different Color Tones in Different Zones” to get a better idea of what color tones are about zone 5 or below zone 5.
Here is the last technical topic we covered last night:
Options when you have more dynamic range in your image than your camera can handle:
Protect the highlights. Once you overload your photo sites, you can't get that information back. In digital photography, exposing for the highlights is a practical move.
Make an artistic choice. Decide what part of the scene you wish to feature. Expose for that, and let everything else go where it may. You might lose some details in the shadows, and you may have blown-out bits, but if the photo is dynamic that way, then c'est la vie!
Take multiple exposures and blend them together in photoshop. (I think we will try to do that in class sometime).
Fan Ho:
What is fishing (in terms of photography)?
https://erickimphotography.com/blog/2017/11/20/the-fishing-technique-in-street-photography/
What is the artist’s date?
“The Artist Date is a once-weekly, festive, solo expedition to explore something that interests you. The Artist Date need not be overtly “artistic”– think mischief more than mastery. Artist Dates fire up the imagination. They spark whimsy. They encourage play. Since art is about the play of ideas, they feed our creative work by replenishing our inner well of images and inspiration.” -Julia Cameron from The Artist’s Way
https://theartistswayblog.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/101-artists-date-ideas/
A brief biography of Fan Ho. https://fanho-forgetmenot.com/about
Slow look through his works published on his website:
https://fanho-forgetmenot.com/the-living-theatre-1
Videos we watched in class:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwxRiOzat-A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMHf6eGwqYE