Tuesday, May 19, 2009

Shooting the sky again


Sky over Spartanburg

We had such a nice sky while out at Barnett Park on Saturday, that I took lots of photographs of it. Like textures, they can be used as layers in Photoshop to provide a textured appearance to an image. They can also be used to replace "bad skies" in otherwise good images. Or, they can just be nice too look at by themselves. The trick to shooting the sky is to pay attention to your highlight warning / histogram to make sure that you are not over exposure large areas or areas of important detail. Under exposure, negative exposure compensation, etc. are generally necessary here. Slight to moderate under exposure tends to saturate the colors in the sky quite nicely. Again, pay attention to your histogram to make certain that you do not completely under expose the sky and loose import details.

Keep shooting.

2 comments:

Pixel Peeper said...

I've been looking forward to your sky and cloud pictures!

Histogram - I just need to learn more about it and start using it. Those who read manuals are at an advantage...;-)

Craig Lee said...

Skies can be both fun and confounding to photograph. There can be a lot of range between the highlights and the shadows in them, particular when the sun is close to or in the frame.

I've been thinking about discussing the histogram and highlight warnings on the camera. Interested in reading about them?