ESFotoClix Blog

When it comes to digital photography, you have no doubt heard many say “Avoid blown highlights.” I say unto you, avoid unnecessary obsession with “blown” highlights. I say this primarily because, while there are many good reasons to avoid blown highlights, the real goal should be to achieve the exposure that works for a given photograph, not live a life-long quest to avoid “the blinkies” or whites that rack-and-stack against the right side of your histogram. To see this, let’s look at the following example. The goal here was to capture a panorama of an iconic ship, whose watery resting place made HDR (one tool to avoid blown highlights) a non-option.

Look across this wide image, and you’ll find plenty of “blown” highlights. Avoiding these would have meant casting the rest of the scene in near pitch-black darkness. Would that work? Not really.

The two guidelines one should follow to know whether to fret about blown-burned-hot highlights are:

1. Are the “blown” highlights distracting from the subject?
2. Are the “blown” highlights causing loss of critical detail?

Now look back at the photo (or whatever image you are evaluating), and you’ll see that the answer to both of these questions is “NO.” In that case, claim victory and move on.

The following is an example of where a “blown” (bright, really) highlight is distracting from the intended subject. Perhaps a crop is needed to ensure the viewer’s eye doesn’t keep going to the bright spot.

An example of where a blown (or overly bright) highlight comes at a loss of detail is a photograph involving a wedding dress. Overly bright whites might destroy the fine embroidered or beaded detail in a beautiful dress, or in some cases, even draw attention away from the bride’s face. Not good! On the other hand, in some cases, the bright whites cannot be avoided if one wants to maintain proper skin tones — it’s not always about the shadows. Nonetheless, always shoot RAW and allow yourself the option to calm down the highlights in PP while preserving the rest of the tonal range. Here’s an example where I decided the eye wasn’t overly drawn to the bright whites (the groom’s shirt, actually!), but a lot of it has to do with the point of the photo (the ring and the faces), which is so strong, as to make the bright whites almost irrelevant. Incidentally, if you study the histogram for this photograph, you will discover that the whites aren’t bunched up against the bright side of the histogram, illustrating that a bright highlight that isn’t “blown” can be just as much of a potential distraction as a truly “blown” one.

BTW, related to those original two questions are:

1. Does avoiding “blown” highlights cast the subject in shadows?
2. Does preservation of highlight detail lead to unacceptable shadow detail?

As we saw in the first photo, an avoid-blown-highlights-at-all-costs strategy would have made the rest of the image so dark as to lose important detail in the ship and surrounding environs. A balanced, sometimes compromising approach is often the best way forward. In short, I think most of the over-emphasis on avoiding “blown” highlights arises from a lack of understanding and appreciation of what the photo is about and what therefore is and isn’t important in the photo. Keep that first and foremost, and then you’ll be able to decide whether the “blown” highlight is truly an issue, or whether you can blow off the whole thing.

Today I fielded a question from a self-acclaimed purist when it comes to photographic color rendition. He wanted to know how one can reproduce the colors one sees with maximum fidelity. My response, as an ex-purist myself, went like this:

How do you know your eyes aren’t in fact in need of calibration? We know some people are color blind, and for the rest of the population, we perceive hues and subtleties differently. So where’s the standard? As an ex-PURIST who couldn’t reconcile these difficult questions with a 100% representation of “color reality,” my recommendation to you is that you start seeing color as an element that adds appeal to your photos. Yes, do avoid boiled-lobster skin tones (hate that!) and don’t go overboard with saturated greens that make the forest look like astroturf, if that’s your personal taste. But relax about getting things “exactly” like you saw them. Here are a couple of gotchas to help you think about this:

1. Color rendition in the field (if you want to get it dead-on in-camera) will depend on 4 basic components: (a) Picture Control (tone curve + saturation + hue), (b) White balance (WB), (c) your lens, and (d) your sensor. You can only control the first 2, and in my experience, with limited ability to counter-act the last 2. Good luck.
2. Color rendition in post-processing has a lot more flexibility, except for one thing: unless you’re editing the photo on your computer with the original scene lit with the original lighting right in front of you, more good luck to you remembering what it ‘actually’ looked like. Add to this complications with calibrated monitors, whether the other display (printed paper, Web user’s monitor, etc.) will match your colors, and the odds of total color fidelity start to fade into an abyss of frustration.
3. Exact color fidelity isn’t always desired. For instance in cases where ambient light is modifying skin tones or even whites beyond what’s “real” or “expected” you will have to come up with a choice: do I want actuality or do I want it to feel right. Whatever decision you make, because of the two previous points, you will not reach 100% fidelity. It always comes down to a matter of choice.

Once this dawned on me, the whole issue of color rendition became less of a concern, and now I just look to stay within certain bounds rather than look for single-point answers to how an image should look. This is freedom, and I recommend you embrace it.

If you want more food for thought, check out previous discussions at: White balance blog entries.

Almost two months ago, I read through a book I picked up several years ago, John Shaw’s Landscape Photography. While the edition I have focuses exclusively on film photography, most of the principles and advice the author lays out transcend whether one is shooting film or digital.

On this reading, a statement that had gone unnoticed previously struck me with great force: “think photo-graphically.”

John Shaw points out that most of what most amateurs photograph falls into one of two categories. First there’s the recording of everyday life: birthdays, vacations, get-together with friends, the coming of a new pet… you get the idea. He calls this a photo-journalistic approach. In doing so I don’t think Shaw is diminishing the great talent many professionals exhibit in this field, but rather pointing out that we should not approach landscape photography in this way: it’s not about recording what we saw for future generations to know we were at this or that magnificent national park, etc.

The second approach Mr. Shaw points out hinges on capturing natural beauty. I would call this the photogenic approach. I’ve certainly chosen many landscape compositions and scenes based on what is beautiful and disdain that which is not. Shaw points out that this, too, is a poor way to select and arrange our subjects.

Instead he wants us to think photo-graphically. Chiefly, he wants us to think about shapes, lines, colors, textures and other graphical elements. Don’t notice a mountain peak; notice a triangle. Don’t notice a rock formation; notice its textures and forms. Don’t notice the beautiful colors in a sunset sky; notice how the interplay of hues compliments the overall image and whether colors clash or hang together. Well, I’m putting this in my own words, but that’s essentially what he’s saying.

Armed with this admonition, I headed out to two very photogenic locations where I would normally be very tempted to photo-journal the great places I had just visited. Looking for graphical elements and finding ways to arrange them inside my frame, I came away with images that begin to deviate in character from most of what I’ve shot to date. (While I’ll admit some of my prior work effectively combined graphical elements, I’ll also cop a plea that this was mostly either coincidental or intuitive, and did not result from forethought on my part.)

Point: lines, shapes, textures

Face: shapes, textures, complementary colors (orange and blue)

Thumb rock: shapes, textures

White bokeh: lines, textures

Kayak: lines, textures (water), color

How do you select your subjects, whether they be landscapes, people, stills, etc.? How do you compose them inside your frame? Maybe it’s time to start thinking photo-graphically.