The Pot of Gold at the End of the Rainbow

As promised in my last post, here is the first in a series of articles about the types of light I encountered at Donna Nook last weekend.

This article is about shooting well lit subjects in front of a background of a contrasting, usually blue, tone.

In photography we encounter three types of contrast. The first of these is where two or more subjects in an image contrast with each other. For example a steam train in front of a gleaming skyscraper-adorned cityscape would be a perfect example of contrasting subject types.

The second type of contrast is contrast between bright and dark areas of a subject. A perfect example of this is a silhouette where the tones of the foreground are so much darker than those of the background that no detail is preserved except the subject's outline.

The type of contrast important to this article is colour contrast. Warm colours such as reds and yellows contrast with cooler colours such as blues and purples, even if they are of the same luminosity.

A perfect example of this is when a subject is lit by the first warm light rays of the day against a blue sky background. Here is an example of this from Saturday morning.

The matrix metering systems in most cameras normally copes admirably with situations such as this. However, I prefer to underexpose all of my shots a little to prevent colour information being lost in the highlights and to produce a more vibrant image. This is particularly important when your aim is to showcase natural colour contrast.

In this case I used Aperture priority and underexposed by two thirds of a stop, resulting in an exposure of 1/250th of a second at F11 at ISO 400.

In some cases, colour contrast can be even more severe than in the case above. An example of this is when a storm cloud moves behind a brightly lit subject. This weekend at Donna Nook, not only did this occur but a triple rainbow formed behind the seal I was photographing.

I shot this photograph using my usual tactic of underexposing by two thirds of a stop. However, because the scene was significantly darker than the previous scene, this was not quite enough to accurately render the image.

Luckily, the highlights in this image were not clipped colour so I was able to decrease the exposure of this image by roughly half a stop without losing too much information. Despite the fact that this image turned out well, I have learned my lesson and will underexpose similar scenes more markedly in the future.