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Exposure Bracketing

Exposure Compensation

Exposure compensation helps you override automatic exposure adjustments your camera makes in situations with uneven light distribution, filters, non-standard processing, or underexposure or overexposure. It lets you take control of your image’s brightness by manually increasing or decreasing exposure.

Exposure Bracketing

Exposure bracketing is a technique where, instead of taking a single photo, you take three (or more) that are all exposed slightly differently; normally one is correctly exposed, one slightly underexposed, and one slightly overexposed.

HDR Photos

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and refers to a technique that expresses details in content in both very bright and very dark scenes. It offers a more natural and realistic picture output even with a widened range of contrast.

Example HDR Images

Image 1

The 3 images above were the images taken to create the final HDR product. The first one is -1 underexposed, the second is balanced and the third is +1 overexposed.

This was the final product produced after merging all 3 images, with a few automatic adjustments applied to exposure and contrast.

Image 2

The 3 individual images used to create the HDR version.

Final result, with better visibility of details in less exposed areas.

Exposure Bracketing

Exposure Compensation –

Exposure compensation basically helps you override automatic exposure adjustments your camera makes in situations with uneven light distribution, filters, non-standard processing, or underexposure or overexposure. It lets you take control of your image’s brightness by manually increasing or decreasing exposure.

Exposure Bracketing –

When you bracket your shots you take exactly the same picture of your subject at several different exposures. This technique gives you a range of options to choose from when you’re editing. As a result, it’s much less likely that you’ll end up with a badly underexposed or overexposed photo.

HDR Photos –

HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photos refers to the capture of an entire image scene that has both bright highlights and dark shadows. In other words, instead of capturing highlights that are clipped and pure white, and/or shadows that are lost to total darkness, your image depicts visible detail in all areas.

My Own Exposure Bracketing

I decided to take my own images of the exposure bracketing technique, by changing the settings to apply. The steps were very straightforward,

Merging the images

Once I took my three images, I uploaded them to Lightroom where I merged them. The way I did this is by selecting the three images, right clicking, pressing photo merge and lastly, I pressed HDR. This merged the three images together, to create a dramatic and detailed image.

Final HDR image

This is my final image below, where the colours are very vibrant. This is because the three images

 

Creative Editing

Vignette

Lightening the image – Dehaze

Ansel Adams

Who?

Ansel Easton Adams (February 20, 1902 – April 22, 1984) was an American landscape photographer and environmentalist known for his black-and-white images of the American West. He helped found Group f/64, an association of photographers advocating “pure” photography which favoured sharp focus and the use of the full tonal range of a photograph. He and Fred Archer developed a system of image-making called the Zone System, a method of achieving a desired final print through a technical understanding of how the tonal range of an image is the result of choices made in exposure, negative development, and printing.

Ansel Adams

Childhood

One of Adams’s earliest memories was watching the smoke from the fires caused by the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. Then four years old, Adams was uninjured in the initial shaking but was tossed face-first into a garden wall during an aftershock three hours later, breaking and scarring his nose. A doctor recommended that his nose be reset once he reached maturity, but it remained crooked and necessitated mouth breathing for the rest of his life.

Adams was a hyperactive child and prone to frequent sickness and hypochondria. He had few friends, but his family home and surroundings on the heights facing the Golden Gate provided ample childhood activities. He had little patience for games or sports; but he enjoyed the beauty of nature from an early age, collecting bugs and exploring Lobos Creek all the way to Baker Beach and the sea cliffs leading to Lands End, “San Francisco’s wildest and rockiest coast, a place strewn with shipwrecks and rife with landslides.

At age 14, he was given his first camera during his first visit to Yosemite National Park. He developed his early photographic work as a member of the Sierra Club. He was later contracted with the United States Department of the Interior to make photographs of national parks.

Sierra Club

The Sierra Club’s stated mission is “To explore, enjoy, and protect the wild places of the earth; To practice and promote the responsible use of the earth’s ecosystems and resources; To educate and enlist humanity to protect and restore the quality of the natural and human environment; and to use all lawful means to carry out these objectives.”

Ansel Adams was an official director of the Sierra Club from 1934-1971.

1927

In 1927, Adams began working with Albert M. Bender, a San Francisco insurance magnate and arts patron. Bender helped Adams produce his first portfolio in his new style, Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras, which included his famous image Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, which was taken with his Korona view camera, using glass plates and a dark red filter (to heighten the tonal contrasts). On that excursion, he had only one plate left, and he “visualized” the effect of the blackened sky before risking the last image. He later said, “I had been able to realize a desired image: not the way the subject appeared in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print.” One biographer calls Monolith Adams’s most significant photograph because the “extreme manipulation of tonal values” was a departure from all previous photography. Adams’s concept of visualization, which he first defined in print in 1934, became a core principle in his photography.

Monolith, the Face of Half Dome” – Ansel Adams

1930s

Bender took Adams on visits to Taos, New Mexico, where Adams met and made friends with the poet Robinson Jeffers, artists John Marin and Georgia O’Keeffe, and photographer Paul Strand. His talkative, high-spirited nature combined with his excellent piano playing made him popular among his artist friends. His first book, Taos Pueblo, was published in 1930 with text by writer Mary Hunter Austin.

During the 1930s, Adams began to deploy his photographs in the cause of wilderness preservation. He was inspired partly by the increasing incursion into Yosemite Valley of commercial development, including a pool hall, bowling alley, golf course, shops, and automobile traffic. He created the limited-edition book Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail in 1938, as part of the Sierra Club’s efforts to secure the designation of Kings Canyon as a national park. This book and his testimony before Congress played a vital role in the success of that effort, and Congress designated Kings Canyon as a national park in 1940, despite previous failures to get the creation of the national park approved.

A photograph featured in Sierra Nevada: The John Muir Trail

Kings Canyon Crisis

Kings Canyon was targeted by water supply and power interests including the city of Los Angeles, who wanted to build hydroelectric dams in Kings Canyon. Due to its heavy flow and long drop – 11,000 feet (3,400 m) in less than 80 miles (130 km) – the Kings River has considerable hydroelectric potential, and reservoirs were proposed for Cedar Grove, Tehipite Valley and Simpson Meadow, among other sites. Development interests blocked legislation that would have made the area a national park, but at the same time, the environmental lobby prevented any of these projects from being built.

Later, Ansel Adams was tasked to photograph and document the area, generating publicity for the preservation movement. However, in order to placate the local irrigation districts – who wanted to leave open the option of reservoirs – Cedar Grove and Tehipite Valley were specifically excluded from the new park. On March 4, 1940, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the bill to create Kings Canyon National Park, which added the original General Grant National Park to over 400,000 acres (160,000 ha) of the High Sierra above Cedar Grove.

Presidential Medal

 For his work and his persistent advocacy, which helped expand the National Park system, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

Adams receiving his medal, 1980

Visualisation

Ansel Adams on visualisation:

“Visualisation is a conscious process of projecting the final photographic image in the mind before taking the first steps in actually photographing the subject.”

“The term visualisation refers to the entire emotional-mental process of creating a photograph, and as such, it is of the most important concepts in photography.”

“To visualise an image (in whole or in part) is to see it clearly in the mind prior to exposure, a continuous projection from composing the image through the final print.” Visualisation is more accurately viewed as an attitude toward photography . . .”

In simpler terms, visualisation is about imagining a scene and figuring out the best shot before taking a photograph.

Zone System

The 11 zones in Ansel Adams’ system were defined to represent the gradation of all the different tonal values you would see in a black and white print, with zone 5 being middle grey.  Zone 0 is pure black (with no detail), and zone 10 is pure white (with no detail).  Each zone represents one f-stop in exposure. There is an 11-stop difference between pure black and pure white, with a 7-stop difference between the darkest black with detail and the lightest white with detail.

A description of each zone in the zone system

Image Analysis

Monolith, the Face of Half Dome” – Ansel Adams

Technical – The lighting in this image is natural, likely during the day although a deep red-filter has been used to darken the sky. The aperture is definitely high, like f/64 since Ansel Adams liked to capture every single aspect of the image in focus.

Visual – Adams has captured the side of a mountain, taking up roughly 2/3 of the frame with a darkened sky visible in the top left as well as a snowy landscape littered with trees in the bottom left and bottom right. The image uses every zone in the zone system, with zones 0-3 being visible in the sky and zone 10 being seen on the snow in the right side of the image.

Contextual – Adams initially took this photograph using a yellow filter but didn’t like the tone of the sky so redid it using a deep red-filter, and was very pleased with the result. A very high aperture was also used since Ansel Adams and the f/64 Group as photographers liked ‘pure’ images, capturing every little detail of landscapes in focus.

Conceptual – Adams was very keen of ‘visualisation’, capturing an image in his mind’s eye before taking the actual image which is what he did when he positioned himself and pointed his camera at the mountain.

Romanticism + Landscapes Photoshoot

Contact Sheet

For my photoshoot, I focused mainly on cliffsides and the seascape whilst also experimenting with trees and greenery.

Selection

The pictures I have selected for editing each have a wide range of light and dark tones as well as compositions which create depth and drama that I will experiment with to see how editing can amplify this (e.g. to see if making the images black and white effectively uses the Zone System).

Editing/Experimentation

For my first edits of this image I darkened the sky to create more contrast between light and dark tones as well as create drama, and turned up the contrast and clarity for the foreground.

I then experimented with making it black and white, which I really liked since the darker tones of the foreground contrast effectively with the lighter tones of the sea and midtones of the sky.

With this image I darkened the sky again to create more drama since in the original image the sky was pastel-ly and bleached out.

Black and white variation, showing contrast between the sea, sky and landscape.

Lowered highlights and whites, increased contrast.

Black and white, creating a greater sense of drama.

Decreased contrast and highlights.

I then turned the image black and white in Photoshop, manually adjusting each colour, then increasing highlights, brightness and contrast to create more drama.

Above are the settings I used to create the effect.

Decreased highlights and whites to create more drama in the sky.

Black and white to create more contrast between the sky, sea and rocky foreground and increased contrast to highlight the range of tones in the rocks more.

Settings used to edit the photo.

Decreased highlights, slightly increased exposure and contrast.

Edited to have darker tones in the trees and leaves, midtones in the trees in the background and lighter tones in the sky.

Settings used to edit the image.

Presentation in ArtSteps

Exposure Bracketing

Key definitions:

Exposure Compensation – Exposure compensation is a technique for adjusting the exposure indicated by a photographic exposure meter, in consideration of factors that may cause the indicated exposure to result in a less-than-optimal image.

What does this mean?

Exposure Bracketing – a technique where you take multiple pictures of the same image at different exposures, then layer them to create one image

What does this actually do?

Exposure bracketing works well when shooting in conditions where the camera cannot take a natural-looking photograph. For example, when a bright light – the sun – causes extreme highlights and shadows.

HDR photos – In photography and videography, multi-exposure HDR capture is a technique that creates high dynamic range images by taking and combining multiple exposures of the same subject matter at different exposures.

What does this actually mean for photography?

There are several reasons why bracketing is essential in photography: It allows you to capture every detail in a scene. It helps you avoid overexposing or underexposing your photos. It gives you more options to choose from when you’re editing.

It is a feature which allows you to take a sequence of images at different exposure values. This is useful when it is difficult to determine the correct exposure, or when dealing with moody lighting or interiors where it is often desirable to have a range of exposures to pick from later.

Ansel Adams Case study

Case study:

Monolith, The Face of Half Dome

Technical

Ansel Adams was a pro at the technical side of photography, and Monolith, the Face of Half Dome shows that off perfectly. He used a large-format camera, which helped him capture tons of detail and a wide range of tones. The photo is a black-and-white gelatin silver print, which gives it those rich contrasts and deep blacks. Adams also controlled the exposure really carefully to make sure everything, from the shadows to the highlights, was just right. He was also known for using the zone system to manage exposure, which helped him get that perfect tonal range.

Visual

The composition is pretty striking. Half Dome’s rock face dominates the image, standing tall and powerful. The vertical orientation of the photo and the lines in the landscape really emphasize the rock’s size and texture. There’s a lot of contrast between the dark shadows on the rock and the bright areas lit by sunlight, which gives the whole image a dramatic feel. The rest of the landscape isn’t the main focus, but it’s still sharp, giving us a sense of the surrounding area without taking attention away from Half Dome.

Contextual

Adams took this photo in Yosemite National Park in 1927, a time when he was deeply involved in pushing for the conservation of natural spaces. The photo was part of his effort to show off the beauty of America’s national parks, especially Yosemite. Half Dome had already been a famous subject in American landscape photography, symbolizing the beauty of the wilderness. Adams used his photography to encourage people to appreciate and protect nature, especially as industrialization was on the rise.

Conceptual

Conceptually, the photo is all about nature’s power and timelessness. Half Dome, standing tall and dominating the landscape, represents the sheer scale and endurance of the natural world. Adams wanted to capture a feeling of connection between people and nature, and this photo really speaks to that. The contrast between light and dark also suggests a balance between opposing forces, like nature versus human influence or light versus shadow. Ultimately, Adams wanted to show us how grand and fragile nature can be.

Photo-Assignment Plan

Rural Landscapes

Ansel Adams

8 photos of the US's iconic wilderness
Ansel Adams, Yosemite Valley, Yosemite National Park, 1934 · SFMOMA
Ansel Adams' take on Yosemite National Park | CNN
Stark Mountain - Ansel Adams - American Landscape Photograph - Large Art  Prints by Ansel Adams | Buy Posters, Frames, Canvas & Digital Art Prints |  Small, Compact, Medium and Large Variants
My Camera in Yosemite Valley Ansel Adams First Edition Signed
8 Lessons Ansel Adams Can Teach You About Photography - ERIC KIM

Who is he ?

Ansel Easton Adams, born on February 20, 1902, and passing away on April 22, 1984, was a prominent American photographer and environmentalist celebrated for his stunning black-and-white photographs of the American West. He played a key role in establishing Group f/64, a collective of photographers who promoted “pure” photography, emphasizing sharp focus and a full range of tones in their work. Along with Fred Archer, he created the Zone System, a technique that helps photographers achieve their desired final print by understanding how exposure, negative development, and printing choices affect the tonal range of an image.

Ansel Adams Biography - A Photographer & Environmentalist

Adams early life

Adams was born in the Fillmore District of San Francisco as the only child of Charles Hitchcock Adams and Olive Bray. He got his name from his uncle, Ansel Easton. His mom’s family originally came from Baltimore, where his grandfather had a successful freight-hauling business but lost a lot of money in failed mining and real estate investments in Nevada. The Adams family has roots in New England, having moved from northern Ireland in the early 1800s. His grandfather started a very successful lumber business that his dad later took over. However, as he grew older, Adams criticized the lumber industry for its role in destroying many of the redwood forests.

What inspired him?

Adams made his first trip to Yosemite National Park in 1916 with his family. He described his initial sight of the valley as an overwhelming experience, saying, “the splendor of Yosemite burst upon us and it was glorious…. One wonder after another descended upon us…. There was light everywhere…. A new era began for me.” During this visit, his father gifted him his first camera, an Eastman Kodak Brownie box camera, and he eagerly took his first photos with great excitement. The following year, he returned to Yosemite alone, equipped with better cameras and a tripod. In the winters of 1917 and 1918, he honed his darkroom skills while working part-time for a photography finishing company in San Francisco.

The Sierra club

The Sierra Club is a U.S.-based environmental group that has branches in every state, Washington D.C., and Puerto Rico. Established in 1892 in San Francisco by conservationist John Muir, it emerged from the progressive movement and became one of the earliest major organizations focused on environmental preservation globally. The club advocates for sustainable energy policies and works to combat global warming, while also opposing coal, hydropower, and nuclear energy. In elections, it typically supports liberal and progressive candidates.

1927

In 1927, Adams teamed up with Albert M. Bender, a wealthy insurance executive and supporter of the arts from San Francisco. Bender played a crucial role in helping Adams create his first portfolio in a new artistic style, titled Parmelian Prints of the High Sierras. This collection featured his iconic photograph Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, captured using his Korona view camera with glass plates and a dark red filter to enhance the tonal contrasts. During that trip, Adams had only one plate remaining, and he imagined the effect of a darkened sky before using his last shot. He later reflected, “I was able to capture an image that represented not just how the subject looked, but how it felt to me and how it would appear in the final print.” One biographer describes Monolith as Adams’s most important photograph, noting that its “extreme manipulation of tonal values” marked a significant shift from earlier photography. Adams’s idea of visualization, which he first articulated in writing in 1934, became a fundamental aspect of his photographic approach.

Other work

Between 1929 and 1942, Adams’s artistic style evolved significantly, and he gained recognition in the art world. The 1930s were especially innovative and fruitful for him. He broadened the techniques he used, focusing on intricate close-ups as well as grand landscapes, ranging from mountains to industrial sites. Bender introduced Adams to Taos, New Mexico, where he formed friendships with notable figures like poet Robinson Jeffers, artists John Marin and Georgia O’Keeffe, and photographer Paul Strand. His lively personality and impressive piano skills made him a favourite among his fellow artists. In 1930, he published his first book, Taos Pueblo, which featured text by writer Mary Hunter Austin.

Kings Canyon

Ansel Adams is recognized as one of the most important conservationists in America. While his stunning photographs played a key role in persuading people to safeguard the country’s natural wonders, he didn’t just rely on his images to make an impact. Adams actively campaigned for conservation initiatives. One of his greatest achievements was helping to establish Kings Canyon National Park. Kings Canyon, shaped by glaciers in the Sierra Nevada mountains of California, is located right next to the famous Sequoia National Park, which was created in the 1890s to protect the massive redwoods from being cut down. Despite its breath-taking scenery and close location to Sequoia, Kings Canyon was still unprotected until the 1930s. By 1936, the future of this natural marvel was at risk.

Cloud and Mountain, Marion Lake by Ansel Adams

His presidential medal

He eventually got a contract with the United States Department of the Interior to take pictures of national parks. Because of his efforts and dedication to promoting these parks, which contributed to the growth of the National Park system, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1980.

Ansel Adams Famous Photography | Dean McLeod Photography

Visualisation in photography

Visualization is all about imagining a scene and figuring out the best shot before actually taking the picture. As Ansel Adams often mentioned, it happens in what he called the ‘mind’s eye.’ This process means looking at a subject and instinctively picking out the key features that you want to focus on and showcase in your photo.

ANSEL ADAMS AND VISUALIZATION VERSUS VISION – WHY VISION ...
visualisation versus vision

The zone system

The Zone System uses numbers from 0 to 10 to represent different levels of brightness. In this system, 0 stands for black, 5 is middle grey, and 10 is pure white. These brightness levels are referred to as zones. To help people easily tell these zones apart from other numbers, Adams and Archer chose to use Roman numerals instead of regular Arabic ones.

How to Meter Using the Zone System — Alan Brock Images

Image Analysis

8 photos of the US's iconic wilderness

Technical – The lighting in this photo is natural daylight with no artificial light. The aperture was high, something like f/22 as its a landscape photo with almost everything in focus. The shutter speed was likely to be something like 5 seconds, this is to counteract the high f stop. The ISO was likely 100 or 200 to keep the amount of noise down.

Visual – There is a lot of tone within this photo, especially the background with the snow, and likely all the numbers on the zone system have been used in this photograph. The mountains in the background create a sense of depth and add some texture to the image, especially with the snow on them. The mountains also create a good, almost symmetrical pattern as they run all the way across the image.

Contextual – “This is one of his most critically acclaimed works, exemplifying Adams’ ability to capture the rich nuance of the environment around him,” Mackay says. The picture was captured for the national parks project, started by the Department of the Interior.

Conceptual – The department had to pull back on funding when the US joined World War Two. However, Adams was motivated by the stunning beauty of the parks and a strong wish to raise awareness about their protection. In 1946 and 1948, he managed to secure two Guggenheim Foundation grants, which allowed him to keep photographing national parks all over the country.

Photoshoot plan

Where – Jersey- around the coast and sea.

What – The cliffs or sea near the lighthouse.

Who – There will be no one in my photos.

When – Late afternoon to sunset.

Contact sheet

Selection process

My best photos

Basic editing

I have done some general edits to improve my images

My best photos edited

Black and white

I edited my photos into black and white to closer relate them to Ansel Adams.

Composition Experiments

My favourite

Art steps

My second photoshoot

Selection process

My favourite photos

Basic edits

Edited photos

Black and white

Creative editing

I used the HDR setting in Lightroom and played around with the ‘Preview for SDR display’ setting to further bring out detail within the image.

Finally, I added some Vignette to draw the views eyes towards the centre point of the image.

Art steps

Evaluation

Exposure Bracketing

What Is Exposure Compensation?

Will help you override the automatic exposure adjustments your camera makes in situations with uneven light distribution, filters, non-standard processing, or underexposure or overexposure.

AEB

On many digital cameras, as well as a few drones, will include an Auto Exposure Bracketing (AEB) option. AEB is very useful for getting high contrast scenes for HDR. When AEB is selected, the camera will automatically take three or more shots, each at a different exposure.

AEB is like having an automatic version of exposure compensation that gives you a number of variations to choose from.

What Is Exposure Bracketing?

It helps you take exactly the same picture of your subject at several different exposure, eg +1,0 and -1. Means that you take two more pictures: one that is slightly under-exposed (usually by dialling in a negative exposure compensation, say -1/3EV), and the second one that is slightly over-exposed (usually by dialling in a positive exposure compensation, say +1/3EV). 

What are HDR Photos?

HDR (High Dynamic Range) HDR photography is a technique where (Multiple Bracketed Images) are merged together to make a single beautifully exposed photograph with a full dynamic range of tones from the very dark to the very brightest.

A camera can only really capture a limited amount of light and darks.

My Attempt

+1
0
-1

My HDR Image

My HDR Images Attempt

Before

After

With An Vignette

Ansel Adams

Exposure Bracketing

how to take –

canon
Exposure Compensation Definition - What is Exposure ...
from internet
Exposure Bracketing Photography [COMPLETE GUIDE]
from internet

how to take –

g0101331
from internet

how to edit into –

my own examples –

final image from these images – this used the merge method –

also used some of my photos that I took out of school –

merge method using better photo –