Friday, December 28, 2012

Into the Shadows

IMGP8935The summer sun came out after a cloudy morning and things began to heat up. This cockatoo found a nice cool spot in the dappled shade with a light breeze to keep cool. Great for the cockatoo but a challenge to photograph.

Auto exposure  Exposed for the shadows  lightroom's adjustment brush mask

On automatic the light meter, has correctly exposed the sky but left the bird and foliage very dark and essentially in silhouette. Whereas a spot metering on the dappled shadows on the cockatoos white feathers as caused the sky to be blown out. So I took a bracketed exposure set, recording both RAW and jpeg versions. Then I selected the best looking exposure and took the RAW file into Lightroom and rather than adjust the whole image I used the adjustment brush in the development module to just lighten the shadows and increase the clarity of the cockatoo and branch. Not quiet dodge & burn but similar results.

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