Location location

I had a location problem this weekend, and one that I need to resolve.  The sky around 4pm yesterday was incredible - dark purple clouds, red clouds, white clouds, and bright shafts of light breaking through.  Had I been in the Lake District I would have known exactly where to go within a few minutes to take some photos, but stuck in Feltham I was stuffed - I had no idea where to go.  I headed for Hampton Court to try to capture some of the statues against the sky (looking up from below) but the clouds over that bit weren't that dramatic.  What I really needed was some open ground.  Then it struck me that I need to have a list of potential locations identified where I can dash to if the moment arises again.

I will note them here as I identify them:

• The common opposite my house - separating me and the Young Offenders....there is a huge space with 360 degrees of sky visible - plus ugly but defined silhouettes on the horizon - all I need to do is walk out the house!
• Bedfont Lakes park - some open space and water - enough to capture sky
 

 

Perfect Exposure by Michael Freeman

Thinking about the next chapter coming up in TAOP on light and exposure, I wanted to read Perfect Exposure by Michael Freeman in advance.  I frequently get exposure wrong, even though I'm careful to make sure all the setting on my camera are correct so I was interested to find out where I might be making mistakes.  Having read Perfect Exposure I'm still not 100% sure, but I think it might be because I usually try to take my shots where the camera's metering is bang on, and in many cases this is not good enough.  I need to take more care to think about what I am doing, what the light conditions are, and adjust the exposure, so over or under exposing in order to cope with a large range of contrast.  I take a lot of photographs in the Lake District, where the light can often be cloudy and gloomy.  It would be great to learn how to capture moody atmosphere of those dark clouds on days when shafts of light penetrate through them and light up patches on the fells.

There is a lot of information in this book, and like his book on colours, my initial reactions are that I need to read it again.  Freeman talks alot about measuring light, but does not explain how to do this, so this is something I need to investigate.  I think it would be useful to work through Perfect Exposure treating it as a workbook trying to find the situations that he describes and practise with them.  Hopefully section 4 of TAOP will give me that exposure anyway.

I also need to start using the histograms to check exposure and to view highlight clipping.  

I will come back to Perfect Exposure as I work through section 4.