climbing photos: blue skies and happy faces
Taking climbing photos can be frustrating to say the least. Anyone who’s taken a few climbing pictures has probably noticed that either the climber’s face turns out very dark, or the sky in the background turns completely white. This balance of getting the correct exposure of the climber without blowing out the background is tricky. Here’s some examples of each extreme:
What happened to that nice blue sky?…
Sorry Eddie, your face looks like it was consumed by a black hole…
So what do you do? Well… usually I adjust my exposure so you can see the climber, maybe slightly under exposed. Then I’ll do my best to crop as much of the over exposed sections out later. Like so…
It’s not horrible, but it’s not great either. A better solution is to expose the photo for the background, then add a flash into the mix to light up the climber. I’ve just started doing this with limited success so far:
It’s not wonderful yet, but it’s getting there.
