Playing off the shadows
In this shot, there is just a faint trace of
Highlights along the model’s upper arm and cheekbone. The colors all fall in the mid-tones or darker, and as they contrast against the pure black background and shadows they appear
richer and bolder without actually undergoing any saturation boost.
In most situations, the choices that you make in either accepting or altering the exposure settings your meter indicates are decisions made to place the tonalities of specific subjects where most viewers would feel that they normally belong. You’re simply tweaking the exposure to correct for “Zone V” metering-adding exposure to keep white subjects white, for instance, or reduction exposure to keep dark subjects dark.
St.John’s Chapel, Tower of London
Here, the deep shadows on this Norman chapel are allowed to contrast with the flaring sunlight through the window, in order to reproduce the actual sensation of filling them in with lighting, would have been out of character.
But there are times when diverging more aggressively from a middle-of-the-road exposure creates some very dramatic images. Typically, such extreme variations-either toward under-or-overexposure-are made to enhance a specific type of subject or to exaggerate an emotional climate. There is, of course, always the choice that if you get too extreme in your variations that people will view your exposures as mistakes rather than creative choices, but it’s only by experimenting that you can find the parameters of your own creativity.