drawbridge!
Gahhhh. I took like twenty shots of Shark River's Route 71 drawbridge opening (in a fairly inappropriate setting, at great embarrassment to myself), and ALL of those shots are ATROCIOUSLY OVEREXPOSED. (Entirely my fault. I decided to shoot on manual and apparently didn't pay enough attention to the meter.)
I seem to recall that last year in my Photo I class, the teacher told us that it was better to overexpose film (resulting in a "dense" negative) than underexpose it (resulting in a "thin" negative) 'cos if you overexpose it, at least you have exposed the film to the information and the information's THERE somewhere.
I can't help thinking that the opposite rule applies to digital photography. I can always lighten a dark photo pretty easily, but once a photo's overexposed, the highlights get completely blown out. There's no hope for 'em--the information's just GONE.
Anyway.
I am (still) in North Carolina (or maybe Virginia or Maryland today--I should be back by tomorrow), so I will A) be relying on "automatic posting," B) will not update the archive until I return, and C) will be unavailable for comments.
3 comments:
Overexposed or not, the photo still fascinates me since I haven't seen a drawbridge since I was a kid!
I agree with you, I feel that it's better to underexpose most digital images. Especially with programs like photoshop and gimp. It's easier to bring out detail that's already there than to add it when it's gone.
Some overexposed shots do end up looking rather good but for the most part I try to stay away from it. I don't think that this one you've taken turned out poorly at all, I like the blues and the sky.
Hilda- You're too kind. :)
Adam- This is the GIMPed version. The original was way way way way overexposed. Try as I might to recreate proper exposure afterwards, you'll still notice a loss of detail in the highlights, 'cos the detail in the highlights is just LOST.
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