It surprises me how so many new photographers don’t spend more time on calculating their exposure and many who are Photoshop savvy will try and fix a bad exposure there. You can only tweak bad exposures so much in Photoshop, but with good exposures you have endless capabilities. Exposure is the most critical element in photography and it is even more important when shooting digital.

Many of you may not remember the term transparencies or “slides” as many of us called them. A few of us even referred to it by name, Kodachrome. Paul Simon made it famous with his song Kodachrome… “So mama don’t take my Kodachrome away.”

The point I want to make is that shooting Digital is like shooting transparencies, especially when it come to exposure. When shooting transparencies you are shooting the negative and the print at the same time.

Before digital we would meticulously calculate our exposure, shooting B&W Polaroid’s by the truck load, adjusting lights with nets and scrims or pulling back power on the strobes. Once the exposure was set we would bracket our shots in no more than ¼ stops being sure to go at least one stop over and one under, sometimes more depending on the subject.  Once the film was exposed, it was tweaking the color. We could have the lab either push or pull the development process (our Photoshop) to dial in our color and exposure. A day or two later we would know how well we had done.

Exposure is very critical and the subtle changes can make a huge difference. Once you start paying attention to critical exposure you too will see a huge difference in the quality of your work.

In the following tutorial I am going to show you how you can tweak your exposure using mask in Photoshop.  But, first things first, use a tripod and bracket your exposures in at least ½ stop increments. Shoot at least one stop under and one over. Then you will have 1 or 2 exposures and depending on the subject 3 or 4 exposures you can work with to “dial it in.”

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The other white meat!  As far as I am concerned it’s the only white meat! 

One of the beautiful things of food photography is that you get to eat your mistakes and when I shoot shrimp I always make a lot of mistakes. On this shoot I made so many mistakes I dreamt of sea horses.

In actuality food photography takes a lot of special tricks to get the food to look just right. Remember we always eat with our eye first and to get that smell and taste to come across in print is not as easy as it looks. My best friend on a food set is the food stylist, actually she is more than my best friend, she’s my wife and she has styled food for about as long I can remember.

Now that dinner is over, maybe it’s time for a dessert session.  Anyone for cake and ice cream?

It’s always a lot of fun to work with Dawn at Dream Rooms.  It’s even more of a pleasure to work with an artist, a true artist who never stops until it’s just right.

From a photographic stand point I do wish she could work with objects that are not shiny! In her words “don’t you just love how that reflects…?” and after I give her that “photographer eye” we laugh, Dawn knows the complexity of  lighting shinny objects. A mirror or two are fine, even a shiny vase or bowl… but the entire wall! I know, I know it is her style and its art and the clients love it and I am just a photographer, another artist capturing art. I’ll shut up.

It does remind me of a story, a story about reflections, and a story about mirrors.

I was shooting a short film for a student at North Texas University; it was a comedy “A Day in the Life of a 6 Ft. Black Man (1995)” http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0498483/.

Here is how the story goes. We were on location in a bar (a newly remodeled bar) setting up lights and moving in cameras and crew (about 20 people) and the owner walked in and freaked out as my gaffer was looking for a place to nail a base plate to the wall for a light (no one would have ever seen it.)  Well he quickly changed his mind and kicked us out. Our production manager frantically went in search of a new location and surprisingly he found one just around the corner and not even open for business yet. This was a 35mm film shoot and we only had the camera (free rental) for the night. I was asked to please scout the location and see if it would work. I walked in (it was dark and empty) and found that it actually seemed to be better than the one we were just kicked out of, so I gave my blessing.  As I walked around in the very dimly light interior, plotting my shots I noticed a mirrored wall, and then another, and another and another. The entire bar was mirrors! Fortunately for us the ceiling was open and I could hide my lights, the crew was a different story.

I remember this because it turned out to be one of my favorite shots. The lead and his girlfriend were dancing and then they moved to their table.  I shot the entire dance scene in this huge wall of mirrors and when they finished their dance and moved toward their table they crossed camera and I followed them across the dance floor,  and then sitting  at their table… one shot, great lighting (thanks Hank) and a surprise to the viewing audience when the subject they were seeing suddenly crossed camera in front of them. 

It’s amazing how certain memories stick in our minds, even after 15 years later.