spot metering – 52 from 52

Picture Info: ISO 640, 38mm, f/22, 1/400sec

Week 33 (3/17/2014-3/23/2014): Hoboken NJ

Picture taken on 3/22/2014 at 6:08 PM

Photography description:

Late again, but just with the post. I got this picture over the weekend which was within my self imposed weekly deadline. Usually missing my deadline (or any deadline) would drive me absolutely nuts, but I decided that I wouldn’t beat myself up about it this time. Lately I’m trying to be more relaxed and not stress myself out over little things. Although my stress free mentality was partially why I missed my posting deadline, the main reason for the latent post was because last week was one hell of a week. It was my turn again to provide support coverage for work, and let’s just say the luck of the Irish was not on my side. Every time I tried to venture out to get a picture my phone buzzed. The constant interruption, or threat of one, didn’t allow me to get more than a few blocks from my apartment. Although my localized limitation still would have permitted me to visit the Hoboken waterfront, I didn’t want to feature another skyline picture this week. There are a lot of techniques that I’m still exploring and to do so I need to find something beyond the skyline to experiment on.

After walking around for about an hour I got a couple good pictures which I thought would potentially work as a featured photo but nothing made me too excited. On my way back to my apartment I stumbled upon a church with this beautiful stone front exterior. The masonry was looking exceptionally nice because of the way it was catching the fading light of twilight. I reached back into my bag pulled out my camera and began the result is what you see here.

Photography concepts:

Last week I threw out a challenge to try and shoot more pictures in “manual” mode. Unfortunately this week’s photograph was not shot in manual, but it was a step in the right direction. After spotting how the light was getting captured along the church’s jagged stone edges, I knew that I couldn’t let my camera make the exposure decision. As good as my camera is, the human eye is better at judging exposure.

When I pulled out my camera it was in aperture priority with spot metering turned on, so I stuck with that setting. In case you didn’t know, spot metering mode allows you to set (or “meter”) the exposure of your image from a specific point. Usually if you leave your camera on the default mode, which for my Nikon is “matrix metering” (the name varies by camera brand), the camera will inspect what’s in frame and choose what it thinks is the best overall exposure. The important part of that statement is the word “overall.” What I’ve noticed is that when a picture has lots of variance in shading sometimes the camera will try to compensate for the darker areas such as shadows and overexpose the image. The image won’t be overexposed to the level that there is damage done, but it doesn’t look like what you see with the naked eye. One way to prevent your camera’s miscalculation is to shoot in manual, which as I said I did not do this time. The other is to use a more manual metering method, which is what I did with spot metering. For this picture I metered my exposure off of the top of the image. The top had the most amount of light so I wanted to make sure that stayed exposed just right, with the rest of the image fading into shadow. The difference in lighting a little more obvious in a zoomed out version of my picture.

Picture Info: ISO 640, 17mm, f/22, 1/400sec

As you can see spot metering allows you to get a very natural look with the shadows. This is a mode that I’ve been experimenting a lot with lately, the hardest part is having the time to select the exposure point and recompose. In the coming weeks I’ll continue to work spot metering into my photography and try to point it out whenever I do.

Picture Info: ISO 100, 35mm, f/1.8, 1/1250 sec

Week 21 (12/23/2013 – 12/29/2013): DUMBO, Brooklyn

Picture taken on 12/28/2013 at 11AM

Picture Description:

Being an admitted cornball, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to work “hoot” into this week’s title. This Saturday marked the first time that I participated in what is often referred to as a “photowalk” in the photography world. The idea was hatched by two of my friends, one a photography enthusiast like myself, and the other a professional photographer. We kicked around some location ideas and eventually settled on DUMBO since it’s one of the more interesting and subject rich locations in the New York area. DUMBO, located in Brooklyn, stands for Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. Before Saturday I had never been to DUMBO so it was nice to finally cross it off my location bucket list. The area can get touristy not only because of the beautiful views but also because it’s home to the famous “Grimaldi’s Pizza”. Though not the original, there is a Grimaldi’s located in Hoboken so standing in line for pizza was not part of Saturday’s agenda.

Classic DUMBO Picture

Shortly after arriving on location I spotted what I consider to be the classic DUMBO picture. Although I didn’t want to use this as my featured picture, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to take the shot. We spent the morning walking around discussing different techniques, equipment and comparing pictures. After walking around the east river’s shore line we decided to head into the streets to see if we could find some lunch and perhaps some graffiti. Post lunch we stumbling upon the brick wall that contained this weeks picture. All three of us worked the wall individually to find what we thought would be the best way to photograph it. It was interesting seeing how other photographers approached shooting the same subject and how each of us had our own unique view. After a few minutes of working on our own we compared pictures and tried our hand at duplicating each others shots. We continued doing this for a little while then eventually decided to call it a day. While driving back to New York City we came to the conclusion that this shouldn’t be our first and only photowalk. In the coming week’s expect more posts chronicling different “photowalks” and if you’re interested in participating in one shoot me an email.

Bokeh Owl Version

Photography Concepts:

This week I learned less from my own shooting and more from the discussions and tips that were traded during the photowalk. One of the biggest takeaways, which might come as a surprise to anyone familiar with photography, was the concept of spot metering. Prior to this weekend I heard the term before but never really understood what it meant or where it would be applicable. In a nutshell spot metering allows you to lock in the exposure you want then recompose and shoot your picture. I didn’t get any good photo example for spot metering this weekend but you can bet I’ll be experimenting more with this in the future and do a post on it.

Another subject that came up worth noting was white balance and the importance of doing it in camera. I always thought that I could do white balancing during editing and there was minimal to no trade offs. This however was not entirely true. Essentially although you can fix white balance after shooting, by getting the correct white balance in camera I’ll have more flexibility in editing later. I mainly shoot landscape and outdoors pictures, so luckily white balance hasn’t come into play that much for me thus far. In 2014 my goal is to take more pictures of people so expect more posts on white balancing now that the subject is a lot less murky.