Jogging the trails in Anchorage

Looking back at yesterday’s post, you’ll see one of the joys of snapping photos in Alaska.  Wide extremes of light, with a lot of lighter tones.  Snow.  We have it for nearly half the year, sometimes more than half a year.

And the colors: they’re definately muted.  Lots of greys, not much in the way of intense color for 3-4 months running.  Perhaps I’ll post one of those pics tomorrow.

The trade-off?  Lots of low-angle light.  The golden hour doesn’t last 15 minutes, like it does in warmer areas – I’ve seen it last nearly two hours at times.

So, how to avoid blowing out the highlights?  Surprisingly, the sd500 does a good job of not overexposing.  Unfortunately, it turns the whites to greys.

My technique: set the camera to Manual (which isn’t really manual), and push it down to ISO 50 (the slowest it goes).  Alter exposure to -1/3 EV (slightly faster, slightly darker photo), which will preserve all highlights.  Change metering to spot metering, and meter on one of the brighter areas (an area I care about).  Don’t worry about blowing out the highlights on snow – we all know what snow is, we don’t need to see detail.

Now, the photo will come back a little muted.  Using Bridge, bump up the exposure until it’s more-or-less the overall brightness desired, then tweak fill light & blacks (occasionally recovery, if you want detail in the snow) until you’re where you want to be.

Think I’m significantly altering the photo?  Not really – the original is slightly less contrasty, with slightly more grey in the snow and less blue in the shadows. That’s the camera’s interpretation of a snow scene, I’m just pulling it back to the real world.