Expose for Bright Foreground & Dark Sky

Difficult Lighting

Lighting is crucial when it comes to photography. Today, I wanted to share a quick solution for you when you encounter difficult lighting to capture a nice photo. I was inspired to share this after a shot I captured on a trip recently to Mammoth Lakes, CA.

The Photo

While standing on the balcony of our room at The Village Lodge Mammoth overlooking the area, I saw a beautiful composition. This was a beautiful scene that I wanted to capture and share with others.

Just looking at the scene, I already knew I was going to have a challenge to make this look good. The foreground area below with the swimming pool was lit brightly and the night sky was dark. I took a few single shots while adjusting settings but I wasn't pleased with how they turned out.

When parts of the scene are overexposed and parts underexposed, we need to take multiple shots. In order for me to capture the final image, I had to take two photos.

Camera settings for both photos are:

Focal Length = 15mm

Aperture = f/2.8

Shutter Speed = 10 seconds

ISO = 1st photo "200" 2nd photo "3200"

Both photos were taken on a tripod with exact same scene within a couple seconds of each other. The first photo was taken to expose for the bright foreground. Because the ambient light of the foreground was so bright, I used a low ISO of 200 for better exposure.

The image below is what the first image looked like. The low ISO dampens the bright light in the foreground and the stars can't be seen in the sky.

Now that I captured a well exposed image of the foreground, I needed to capture an image for the sky. Since the sky is dark, I needed to increase my ISO significantly to see the stars and clouds. In order to see the stars and clouds, I increased my ISO to 3200. As you can see in the photo below, 3200 ISO shows the night sky well and overexposes the foreground significantly.

Final Result

To complete the image, I would have to edit the images in Adobe Lightroom. I did a photo merge with the two images using High Dynamic Range (HDR). After the merge was complete, it created a properly exposed overall image. I did a few minor edits and the final image is below.

Summary

Well, there you go, a quick and basic overview on how to handle difficult lighting situations. You can't control the lighting of the scene but you can break it down into multiple sections in photography. A single photo of this scene wouldn't work so taking multiple photos of the scene and exposing for a different area is the answer. This isn't the only way to get a properly exposed image in this scenario, it was the method I used for this particular shot.

If you are located in the Ridgecrest, CA area, be sure to check out my Events to find my next photography class. If you are interested in learning photography, register for an upcoming class to learn more.

The next time you are out shooting a difficult lighting scene, consider trying this method and see what happens.