Jodie Coston lessons

Lesson Ten: Special Requests
We've now gone over all of the basics that I outlined when I set my course up, but I've been making notes as I've been going of areas of special interest from students. It may seem like an odd combination of subjects, but I'm sure you'll find them of use.

Exposure Metering Systems
I've had a few questions from students wanting a better understanding of why their whites aren't white enough or their blacks aren't black enough when using auto exposure. This is because of "tricks" that your camera's metering system (smart enough to figure out the proper exposure for you 90% of the time) plays.

To understand proper exposure, it's important to understand what "white", "gray" and "black" are in a photograph. (Trust me, I know how stupid that sounds, but hang in there with me.) We already discussed in our lessons on aperture and shutter speed that if you set your camera on its "auto" settings and go out and take a picture of a field of snow, you might be surprised that you don't get a white picture back. In fact, you'll probably be unable to find a spot of white anywhere in the picture. This is because your camera's metering system is thinking for you.

Just as an example of what I'm talking about, take a look at the following shots. They were both taken using the same light and same aperture, and I told the camera to calculate the exposure for me by varying the shutter speed. One was taken of a black piece of posterboard and one was taken of a white piece of posterboard. I removed all of the color information from the shots, leaving them as simple grayscale, to make for easier comparison.

See if you can tell me which one is taken of white paper and which one is black paper.

No? You're not alone. The first time I had a teacher show me this in a photography class, I didn't believe that he had really taken a picture of a white piece of paper and a black piece of paper. So I had to go home and try it out. The results looked exactly the same, as above! I encourage everyone reading this to try this themselves. It's really weird when you know you were just staring at white and black pieces of paper and your pictures come out looking the same. It will definitely leave an impression on you.

Generally, camera auto metering systems take a spot or two in a photo, jumble them up and expose that jumble so that it comes out as something called "middle gray" - the color you see in the examples.

There are several types of metering systems, however (and all camera manufacturers make theirs work a little differently than the other manufacturers out there), and I'll explain them a little better so that you may know in which situations each works best.

The most common metering system that cameras use is "center weighted" metering.
In this system, your camera automatically picks out just the center of your shot and uses the information from that area to decide what "middle gray" is and how to expose your photo properly. This works well for most people who shoot snapshots and tend to plunk their subjects smack-dab in the middle of the frame, not really caring about the backgrounds or areas of brightness or darkness outside the center of the frame. This type of metering system is fine if most of your frame is close to the same color tone, with few blacks or whites.

The matrix metering system is more advanced. Your camera will divide your viewfinder into a series of "cells", as in the illustration:

Then the camera takes the exposure of each of those cells and averages them to determine the correct exposure. Depending on the type of camera you're using, a matrix metering system can take as many as five to twelve areas and use a very sophisticated mathematical formula to determine what exposure you should use. A metering system like this can come in particularly handy when photographing a highly contrasty situation.

The metering system I use most often if I don't have the time or ability to make my own exposure readings is the spot metering system. The spot metering system lets you pick an area in the grid of your viewfinder to set your metering against. In the illustration, I don't have any particularly dark areas in the shot that I need to worry about underexposing, so I would choose the brightest area of the photo for the camera to meter against. This would be the bottom area of the sky and the top of the roof, and it would assure that my sky would not be overexposed.

Spot metering is also handy if you want to take a picture of a silhouette in your foreground, like a cactus in front of a sunset. You can use spot metering to set the exposure for your sunset (normally one to two stops underexposed to really bring out the vivid colors) and your foreground object will wind up completely dark.

Along the same lines, if you are using "autofocus" mode on your camera, you can set your camera's metering system to spot-meter on whichever area the camera focuses on. This is usually called "auto spot meter" or something similar. It's useful for situations in which your background is significantly darker or lighter than your subject.

In this photograph, the focus was set on the wedding rings and I used the camera's spot metering to set the exposure to keep the rings their natural rich, gold color. The lights were bright and that made the paper of the marriage certificate almost "blow out", or turn quite bright, but that actually makes the print and the rings stand out that much more.

Auto spot metering is also very useful in situations where your subject is white and the background is black or very dark, like if you were photographing a white bird on dark water. If you exposed for the water, all details of the bird would get lost and it would come out as a bright white blob on some lovely water. But if you focus on the bird and set your metering system to expose for the bird, you'll wind up with details of all of the bird's feathers and darker water in the background.

Night Photography
Another area of photography I got many questions on over the course of this lesson was night photography. Hopefully I answered everybody's specific questions via e-mail, but I thought to myself that there are so many fun things you can do with night photography that I should spend a bit of time here talking about the creativity that night can bring to you and your camera!

One quick note first - night photography is, at this point, better served by film photography than digital photography. Night photography tends to require particularly long shutter speeds, and long shutter speeds tend to equal noise in the world of digital cameras. Check to see if your digital camera comes equipped with something called "long exposure noise reduction" or something similar. If it does, your camera will work fine, but be prepared for a five to twenty second wait in between exposures while your noise reduction feature works its magic on your picture.

Okay... Another quick note first... when using long exposures and film, you may have to deal with something called "reciprocity failure". Film is made so that when it is exposed to light, it has certain characteristics that you can rely upon. For example, its colors will be what you expect for the light you are using, you will get the exposure you expect for the aperture and shutter speed you've chosen, etc. However, when using long, bizarre exposures, sometimes these characteristics of the film will change. Sometimes very long exposures will create images that appear to be underexposed, even though you sat down and calculated exactly what your exposure should be. This is due to reciprocity failure - meaning that even though you are shooting with ISO 400 film, the ISO sort of "changes" on you. And on top of that, your color balance can get knocked all out of whack. For that reason, I suggest bracketing your exposures when taking long shutter-speed images, and always looking at night photography as an adventure. It's hard to predict what you'll come up with. Keep a log of each frame on your film and what aperture and shutter speed you used. That way, you can go back and refer to this information when you get your photos back and learn from them. You can purchase the same film again, try the same experiment and know that you'll need to expose one or two stops more, or perhaps use a filter to compensate for the color changes. All films are different, so its something that you'll need to play with on your own to get exactly the results you desire with your preferred film.

Fireworks
One of the most fun areas of night photography is photographing fireworks. The first tip I recommend for photographing fireworks is to find a good spot ahead of time while it's still light out, where you won't be surrounded by a crowd of people. Set up your tripod and leave it there until it's time for the action to begin and you'll have a head start on the other people trying to take photos of fireworks. Make sure you're a good distance away from where the fireworks will be - a view from the side is much more beautiful of a view of fireworks looking straight up. Use a zoom lens that will allow you to vary how much of the sky you have in your viewfinder. If you're around a body of water or other reflective surface, use that to your advantage and get the reflections of the fireworks in the bottom half of your frame!

When it's time to take the pictures, have a piece of black posterboard or cardboard handy. Put your camera's shutter speed on "B" for bulb. Since you really can't predict exactly where the fireworks will be in your frame when they go off, you have to aim your viewfinder in the general direction of them. When you're satisfied, trip your camera's shutter. If you have a cable release, this will work particularly well, as it assures you won't move the camera at all while you're opening and closing the shutter. Watch while the fireworks go off. If there is a lag time in between each firework, you can put your piece of black cardboard in front of your camera's shutter, leaving the shutter open - this will assure that you don't get any unusual elements in your frame. After several fireworks have gone off, close your camera's shutter and try again. Depending on the rate of the fireworks display, a shutter speed of between five and thirty seconds will usually be plenty. You'll be amazed at the results you get when you pile multiple fireworks onto one camera frame!

Quick side note - make sure you have back up batteries! All those long exposures zap your camera's energy more quickly than what you're used to.

Painting With Light
Painting with light is a term that basically means you open your camera's shutter in darkness and then proceed to use lights that you control to light areas from whichever directions you like to "bring out" specific sections of your photo. Commercial photographers use this a lot in the studio with something called a light pen or light wand. These tools generally let you change the color and intensity of your light and let you illuminate very specific sections of your subject. Say you had a bottle of beer that you wanted to photograph. You could place it on a piece of glass in a dark room and proceed to use your light wand to paint sections of alternating yellow and white light on the edges of the bottle, making it seem to "glow" - and then use different colors to create interesting shapes and lines on the background.

One of the most interesting uses of painting with light that I ever saw was of a castle. The photographer set up his camera on a tripod and opened the shutter for several hours at night. While the shutter was open, he walked around the grounds of the estate and used a spotlight that he covered alternately with different colored filters and shined these colors all around the foliage as well as the actual architecture. Because of the incredibly long exposure time, he and his equipment wandering around for a minute or two in different areas didn't show up on the final transparency - but the result was the most amazing "fairy-land" effect I've ever seen.

Star Trails
To photograph star trails, you'll want to again use your camera's "bulb" setting, just like in the fireworks section. Other essential elements include:

a. A clear night with no clouds
b. No moon visible in the sky - the ambient light will mess with your exposure
c. A shooting location with no ambient light - in Montana this is easy, but if you live in a city you'll want to venture far from your city's limits.
d. A tripod (of course!)
e. A film camera and a fast film - ISO 400 or faster

Shutter speeds for star trail images are very long, anywhere from 15 minutes to several hours. (I once fell asleep while shooting star trails and unfortunately woke up after dawn, ruining my image.) The longer the shutter speed, the longer your star trails will be. Haze and moisture in the atmosphere can catch ambient light and affect your exposure, so it's difficult to give you a hard and fast "use this aperture setting for this amount of time" rule. But I would start off by setting my focus on infinity, opening my aperture all the way, and taking a shot for 15 minutes. Next, try another for a half hour. Finally, make a final shot of an hour or more.

If you live where you can see the north star, put it in the center of your photograph and your stair trails will make circles around it.

If you use negative film, make SURE to take it to a professional photo finisher and tell them that you took night photos of star trails, or you won't get back prints that look anything like what you expect. I always use the fastest slide film that I can find when photographing star trails.

It can be fun to put a land object in your foreground when making these kinds of photographs. A bridge or building can make an interesting silhouette against this type of dramatic sky. A tree "painted" by a flashlight during your exposure can be breathtaking. As always, use your imagination and have fun!

The Moon
And last: Don't forget the moon! Adding a full moon or beautiful crescent moon to your photography can really enhance a night city or landscape shot. A telephoto lens will make your moon appear particularly large and dramatic. Keep in mind that the moon will always look much smaller in your photo than it does to your naked eye. A good thing to remember is if you take the length of the lens you're using, divide that number by 100 and it will tell you in millimeters approximately how large the moon will appear on your film. A "standard" 50 mm lens will give you a moon that is about a half of a millimeter on your film. So you'll want to use at least a 200 mm lens - a 500 mm lens or telescope will give you fantastic moon shots. Use your camera's spot metering system that we talked about in the first part of this lesson to make sure that your camera captures details of the moon, not just a huge, overexposed white disc in the dark sky.

Photographer's Block
My last area of instruction is on what to do when you're experiencing the photographer's version of writer's block... You know you WANT to go out and take pictures, but you don't know where to start. When I get in such a rut, I give myself assignments. Maybe you can use some of my past ideas to help yourself out of a similar situation.

1.	A picture a day for a month. Usually once a season, I try and spend an entire month going out and walking around in different places, looking for photographs that emphasize the beauty of that season. Some shots may be details, some may be landscapes, the sky or even weather phenomena. It spurs my creativity to know that there are photos out there just waiting to be taken, and I canât take them if Iâm sitting around in my office. My goal is to shoot at least twenty photos a day - hopefully fifteen or so of which are âkeepersâ. When Iâm done, I go back and look through for the best shot from each day, and I have a wonderful portfolio.
2.	The letters of the alphabet. Itâs sometimes fun to sit down and write out the letters of the alphabet - then come up with a subject or concept for each of them, and use those as an assignment. Itâs enough to keep you busy for a month. Examples: A - Archways (Go out looking for archways - naturally beautiful examples of architecture.) B - Beginnings (A new baby, children on the first day of school, a new plant springing to life, sunrise, etc.) C - Calendar Photos (Landscapes and Nature) You get the idea.
3.	Color. Assemble a multitude of objects that are unrelated, other than by color theme. Use dramatic lighting and twenty or thirty things ranging from dead leaves to potatoes to burlap and old baseballs can create quite an interesting, fun, moody shot. If nothing else, this exercise will get you to really look at the things around you in a new way.
4.	Find someone to model for you. A new model youâve never photographed before can be inspirational, especially if theyâre willing to take direction. Capturing a person jumping in midair, peeking over a wall, in a gladiator costume from the local costume shop or anything a bit offbeat can bring your photography to life and make your creativity take off!

Well, that brings us to the end of our lessons. I hope you all have had as much fun as I have with these. I've enjoyed seeing your photographs through these lessons and watching so many of you improve with leaps and bounds!

Your homework for this last lesson is similar to that of lesson nine. A free study of sorts, but I'd encourage you all to try and take at least one photo per day (taking into consideration that I know you all have kids to take to football practice or school or jobs that constrain your time), rather than just one for the week. If you don't have time this week, try it at a later time when you have the opportunity to put some effort into it. This exercise will definitely stir your creativity by really getting you in the mindset of photography and making you focus on it. And as always... have fun and BE CREATIVE!

Click here to discuss this lesson with jodie and classmates. Also post your work for feedback and critique in the morguefile forums .

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