Photography Lessons, Tips and Insights: Digital Masters: Adventure Photography, Capturing the World of Outdoor Sports by Michael Clark, published by Lark Books

When talking about how to expose an image, I am going to assume that you already know how to work with your camera by adjusting the shutter speed and aperture. Because correct exposure is such a critical topic to the success of good adventure shots (and really, any digital photographs), this section will be very specific about how to dial in the best exposure.

I have found digital exposure to be quite different than it was back in the film days. Digital has a larger dynamic range when shooting RAW image files than the slide films I used to swear by, but it is also much easier to blow out the highlights on a CCD or CMOS silicon sensor than it was with film. There are three things I’ll cover here to help compensate for this problem: using the histogram to adjust the exposure, “shooting to the right,” and always shooting in RAW.

The histogram is the most important tool in any digital camera. It is a bar graph of the intensity of light in an image as recorded by the sensor. Like a bar graph, it is read vertically and horizontally. The horizontal axis spans the range of brightness from Black (0) on the left to white (255) on the right. The height of the bars indicates how many pixels on the sensor were exposed at that brightness level.

Digital devices are different in that they are linear devices, whereas film and our eyes are not; they are non-linear. Hence, a CCD or CMOS chip is just recording the number and intensity (amplitude and wavelength) of the photons that hit the sensor. Once the brightness level becomes greater than what the sensor can record, the chip just records it as white. This is why you have to watch your histogram and your exposure to be sure that you don’t blow out important highlights. The reality is some highlights are going to blow out—it is just a matter of whether they are important or not. The other fact about digital and the linear relationship is that most of the image information is recorded in the first two brightest stops of the sensor’s levels.

If that sounds confusing, consider it this way: If you are shooting a 12-bit RAW file, there are a total of 4,096-segmented values of brightness on the histogram. Of those, 3,072 of the values (or roughly three-fourths of them) are in the brightest part of the histogram— which is the third of the histogram on the far right. Basically, this is a technical way of saying that if you underexpose your images, you are throwing away massive amounts of data from your camera’s sensor and when you tweak the exposure of the RAW file, you’ll start to see noise show up in the shadow areas of your images.

For new shooters, the common tendency is to underexpose to preserve highlights. Unless you are creating a silhouette, overexposing or metering as your cam era suggests will result in much better image quality. I recommend that you always shoot in RAW mode and set your camera’s exposure so the histogram is as far to the right as possible without blowing out any important highlights. This method is called “exposing to the right.” Another reason for exposing to the right is controlling noise. When you expose to the right, the sensor creates less noise at any ISO than if you underexpose. This is a critical point if you are shooting at high ISOs, which is fairly often when shooting adventure sports.

Following this rule of exposing to the right is counterintuitive, and trust me, it will take some time to get comfortable with. When you first view your images in your RAW converter processing software (like Adobe Lightroom), it will look like you really messed up because the images will be a little overexposed and might be lacking in contrast. One can recover up to two stops of highlight detail using a RAW converter like Lightroom, and the image can be brought back down to the correct brightness so that it looks the way it should. This is one of the many reasons why you want to shoot in the RAW format and why you need to understand a complete digital workflow while you are out shooting to obtain the best digital exposure.

A Special Note from the Author to Digital Image Cafe Readers

Adventure photography is a lot of hard work. There is just no way around that. This isn’t some nugget I forgot to mention in the book – this fact is mentioned quite often. But I just wanted to reiterate that the best images usually involve the highest sweat quotient. The harder you work and prepare for a photo shoot and the more planning and time you give yourself to set up the ideal image, the better the results. There aren’t any secrets as to how photography works. The more you put into it the more you’ll get out of it – just like anything else. If you are obsessed with getting the best images possible then you are going to have some stellar images sooner or later.

Hence when you go out to shoot adventure sports or your next adventure, give yourself time before anyone else shows up to really scout the location and think about the type of image you want – and what the best possible image for that location would be. Distill all of the clutter and sensory overload into an image that is crisp and clear, and says exactly what you want to say about that location or activity.

Ready to learn more?

Digital Masters goes extreme! This beautifully produced guide by Michael Clark is the newest entry in the series, as well as the first book on a fast-growing photographic genre: shooting today’s popular extreme outdoor sports, from mountain biking and ice climbing to surfing, BASE jumping, and more. Clark is one of the world’s most respected adventure photographers, and he offers sage advice—gained from years of hard-earned experience—on equipment, techniques, and the specific skills required to get in on the action. Learn to capture fast-moving subjects and deal with harsh conditions and horrible weather—even when you’re hanging from ropes and riggings in a squall. Of special interest is the Portraiture and Lifestyle chapter, which covers increasingly in-demand techniques.
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What's Inside

The great information on this page barely scratches the surface of the knowledge contained in this great book! Click on the image below to see the complete Table of Contents.

About Michael Clark

Michael Clark is an internationally published outdoor photographer specializing in adventure sports, travel, and landscape photography. He produces intense, raw images of athletes pushing their sports to the limit and has risked life and limb on a variety of assignments to bring back stunning images of rock climbers, mountaineers, kayakers, and mountain bikers in remote locations around the world. He uses unique angles, bold colors, strong graphics and dramatic lighting to capture fleeting moments of passion, gusto, flair and bravado in the outdoors. Balancing extreme action with subtle details, striking portraits and wild landscapes, he creates images for the editorial, advertising and stock markets worldwide.

As a former physicist Michael has worked on both sides of the technical revolution – helping refine the technology and using it for his current profession. Michael has worked as a professional photographer since 1996 and added digital photography to his repertoire in 2003. While Michael still shoots some film, mostly medium format, the lion’s share of his images are now produced with high-resolution digital cameras. He has been featured in Outdoor Photographer (September 2001), Nikon World Magazine (Summer 2006) and New Mexico Magazine (2007) for his work with extreme sports.

He contributes to National Geographic, National Geographic Adventure, Sports Illustrated, Outside, Men's Journal, Backpacker, Outdoor Photographer, Digital Photo Pro, Climbing, Alpinist, Rock and Ice, Bike Magazine and The New York Times among many others.

A sampling of Michael's advertising clients include Nike, Nikon, Adobe, Red Bull, Patagonia, Propel/Gatorade, Pfizer, DuPont, 20th Century Fox, Black Diamond, Cloudveil, Prana, Arc′teryx, Camelbak, La Sportiva, Gregory Packs, and Butterfield and Robinson.

More about this Book and Michael Clark

We will be awarding a copy of this book to a Digital Image Cafe Member by a random drawing on Friday Afternoon, January 15th 2010!

In addition, this is the Theme Subject of the Digial Image Cafe Facebook Fan Page January Contest and Mr. Clark has graciously agreed to be the judge for the contest after it closes on January 31st! So, go to our Fan Page, become a Fan, visit the “Events” Tab and enter your Portrait photo today!

About Lark Books

The digital age isn't coming, it's here. With amateur and professional titles on such topics as lighting, digital photo art, nature, glamour, digital scrapbooking, wedding, the business of photography, and our great Magic Lantern series, Lark is at the heart of digital photography publishing.