Practical Photography - UK (2020-02)

theedit

100 PracticalPhotograPhy

Snow and ice can be tricky to expose, but

it ’s easy to improve images with RAW and

Photoshop, as Kingsley Singleton shows.

Turn dull snowy

scenes into a

winter wonderland

W

hen you’re shooting

snowy or icy scenes, you’ll

often come across exposure

problems, because these scenes reflect

a lot of light and so the camera’s

metering system will underexpose

the image, leaving shots dim and snow

and ice greyer than it should be.

there are plenty of steps you can

taketo fix thiswhenshooting,such

asusingmanualmode,butimages

can alsobe improvedin Photoshop.

shootingin theraWfile fo rmatgives

you morecontrolin editingthanwith

a JPeg. this will allowyouto easily

controlexposurein post-processing,

soyoucando awaywithglaring

hi ghlightsanddarkshadows,and

raWal somakesit easierto addcolour

effectsto thepicture,suchas warming

or cooling parts of it by altering the

white balance.

here, we’ll use the adobe camera

raw converter, mainly concentrating

on the gradient Filter, so that you can

make changes independently to the sky

and the landscape. you’ll then take the

pi cture into Photoshop and continue

the work, adding a sun star to the sky,

sothattheimagehasa properfocal

point.this isn’ta completelypurist

approach,butwe’restillworkingwith

what’s in theoriginal,ratherthan

addingfakeelements,likePhotoshop

le nsflares,andwe’llensurewe place

the sunstarto matchthereallight

sourcein thescene.

Withjusta littleworkyou’llendup

withwinterimagesthatreallycapture

and showoffthebeautyof theseason.

sunstarshot

what

youneed

nPhotoshop

nA sn owyshotwith

exposureissues,and

a se paratephotoof

a su n starto add

in later

AboveTheskydoesn’tlooktoobad,

butth e foregroundsnowandiceis

underexposed.Thisisn’tunusual,as it’s

thecamera’sreactionto bright,reflective

sn ow,andshootingintothelightwill make

a darkerexposure.

RightThe startimageis a RAWfile sowe

caneasilyimprovetheexposure,as well

asth e balanceof colour.

before

Forthemostnatural

re sults,it’sbestto add

a genuinesunstar

pi cture, rather than

trying to make one in

Photoshop, or by using

th e built-in lens flare

filter effects. Therefore

you’ll either need to

comb your back

catalogue of images

to find those with sun

st ars to use, or shoot

one to order.

If you’re doing the

latter, wait for a c lear

day, then use a very

small aperture like f/16.

Underexpose the shot

using negative exposure

compensation and, with

a wide-anglelens,focus

ona distantobject.

Then recompose with

the sun prominent in

the f rame and shoot.

Neverpointlonglenses

directlyat the sun to

shoot or you could

damage your e yes,

as well as the c amera.

Above By adding a sun star from another

image, we can also give the picture some

much-needed warmth.

expert advice shoot a sun star