[sherrvonne]

The Park I frequent has thickly wooded areas, it is very shaded and dim along the paths... and more shade not on the paths which is where all the interesting stuff is. I was trying to get detail in the shadowed areas but ended up blowing out the highlights, is there a happy medium in this scenario? The blades of grass and leaves were very reflective, I know I need more practice with this, any critique is welcome, lol, I will consider it payback for when my mom asks me for critique on her artwork/paintings and I have to be brutally honest.
Is it better to expose for the bright grass instead of the dark areas? As you can see from this example pic, even some of the twigs, branches on the tree had blown highlights.

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Last edited by sherrvonne; 06-12-2016 at 05:33 PM.

[CreationBear]

The blades of grass and leaves were very reflective

Certainly no expert, but that's the kind of "briar patch" I'm drawn to as well--I've started to run a CPL almost always since the cutin layer of leaves can be so danged shiny if the light's not just perfect.

[dms]

If you want to capture the widest DR why would you shoot at iso 800? From the shutter speed the lowest iso on your dslr (iso 100 I presume) is no problem, and this likely would give you a couple of stops more DR. Also digital gives you the opportunity to try several shots and decide what is best--and educate yourself for later when you only can get one shot. The important slice of the wider DR is what you want to say, and whether blown highlights or noisy darker areas will detract significantly. Also if you bracket you can also combine the shots--if you choose to learn/develop this approach.

I would add that blown out highlights are not always bad--as they can say there is/was lot of glare. This shot falls I think under this category, but the darker areas are so light that one doesn't get the feeling of shade--so i would lower the exposure in pp.

[sherrvonne]

I am going to go back and try it again at lower lower iso's.

[K McCall]

Hello from Dallas! The Texas sun can be a beast to shoot with, so for a shot like this, I'd aim for a different time of day, personally. My photography really kicked up a notch when I changed how I approached a shot. Instead of photographing things, I try to photograph light - how the light falls on my subject, why the light falling that way makes the scene special, etc. etc. So if you're unhappy with the light on the scene, there's only so much your camera can do (although as dms rightly points out, you can go the HDR route). Instead, you can try the same spot at different times of days or in different types of weather. Even the winter sun can make a huge difference.

[sherrvonne]

Hello from Dallas! The Texas sun can be a beast to shoot with, so for a shot like this, I'd aim for a different time of day, personally. My photography really kicked up a notch when I changed how I approached a shot. Instead of photographing things, I try to photograph light - how the light falls on my subject, why the light falling that way makes the scene special, etc. etc. So if you're unhappy with the light on the scene, there's only so much your camera can do (although as dms rightly points out, you can go the HDR route). Instead, you can try the same spot at different times of days or in different types of weather. Even the winter sun can make a huge difference.

That is what I wanted to do but the park only opens at 9:00 am and I would be in there at 6:30 am.... And waiting for morning light, and then they close at 5:00pm and so no evening light either and it also prevents getting a sunrise or a sunset or from the bluff. Yes, I do need to learn to work with the light.