Younes Bounhar Photography

Blue Morning

Justin Van Leeuwen and I braved the cold on Saturday morning (close to 20 degrees below) to go make some pictures on the river. The conditions were ideal for hoarfrost and I had just missed an amazing hoarfrost show the day before, so nothing would have stopped me from going out that morning.

Well, the frost wasn’t nearly as impressive as the day before, but as they say, when handed lemons…The conditions were still pretty interesting and we got some interesting images out of it. In the first series of images I am posting today,  I was drawn to the blue highlights in the water and the contrast with the white snow and frost in the pre-dawn light.

Just a reminder for those of you interested, when shooting snow, don’t forget to overexpose your images by 1 to 1.5 stops to make sure the snow doesn’t turn dirty gray.

Posted on December 20th, 2009 in Images Photography Tips

3 Responses to “Blue Morning”

1. Joe Williams says:

   December 21, 2009 at 8:23 am

   Beautiful shots, Younes. I may be showing my ignorance here. If you overexpose 1-1.5 stops, won’t that cause blowing-up of the highlights? How do you avoid that?

   Reply
   • Younes says:

     December 21, 2009 at 8:41 am

     Thanks Joe. Regarding your exosure question, it does sound counterintuitive but it’s quite simple in fact. Your camera’s meter exposes for 18% grey, meaning it picks an exposure That Will on average be équivalent to midtone grey. Since a winter scene is mostly white, the camera will try to bring it back to grey and therefore underexpose by default, hence the need to compensate by forcing it to “overexpose”. Hope it makes sense.

     Reply
2. Joe Williams says:

   December 22, 2009 at 11:49 am

   Aha! I wasn’t aware of the meter exposure value. What you said makes sense in that context. Thanks! Maybe with some luck it will snow again this way and I can try it out for myself

   Reply