Spotlighting
(Originally published on 2014)
Have you ever photographed “spotlights”?
Art Wolfe, a contemporary master of nature photography, mentions spotlighting in one of his books. He refers to situations in which only a portion of the subject is lit by a light source. A typical example is sunlight passing through a gap between the clouds.
He comments: “ … spotlighting is an unusual occurrence that when encountered should be taken advantage of”. His major suggestion for these situations is exposing for the highlights, even if it means leaving other elements in the frame underexposed.
It makes total sense. I agree about being very unusual situations, and because of that, worthy of the effort to get the most of them. As for the decision of exposing for the highlights, I also agree, considering that other elements in the shadows might be left out of the frame by composing tightly around the highlights, but it also depends on the situation.
So, taking this idea into consideration I’m sharing the following images of my own experience with Spotlighting.
This “godbeams” (colorful name given to this kind of scene) shot was tricky. The contrast between the highlights in the clouds and the shadows of the coast was so extreme that it took a careful exposure reading to achieve the right combination. I finally decided to keep the nearby trees as a subtle sillhouette and bring the light in the clouds and sea as the real relevant element in the shot.
This second shot has a “spotlight” much wider than the previous image, but it still made me face the challenge of finding the right exposure. As you might see, the balance between the strongly lit area and the part of the mountains that remain in shadows has to be decided, and the quickly changing light conditions it was a matter of quick decisions and several frames taken to decide in post-production which of them managed the best result.
