[KellyL]

Crotographer: I am very, very, very inexperienced with film. And you are correct, it is about the eye of the photographer.

This weekend I was hired to shoot the football portraits for our local Junior Football League. I did this last year, and I scheduled two evenings and everybody loved the shots. This year the director scheduled pictures yesterday, all day long. The shoot began at 8:00 AM and ended around 2:30 PM. Needless to say, I was VERY concerned about how to do this shoot.

The early morning shots did not worry me so much. I grabbed my 42" round reflector and threw the light up into their faces...and used on camera flash. I was very frustrated, however, that I could not get the blue sky blue. It was a gorgeous day.

A team would come, have their pictures taken, then go warm up and play. I would sit for about 45 minutes waiting for the next team to arrive for their pictures. As I sat, I was reading a book on Exposure for Digital Photography. I have read this book before, but sometimes it takes a couple of reads for something to sink in.

I read a section that made SO much sense to me after all the thinking I have put into understanding exposure. The book read, and I paraphrase, that the digital photographer must decide what detail he or she would like to emphasize in the picture. One will have to sacrifice on one end of the dynamic range or the other. Either lose detail in the highlights, or lose detail in the shadows.

I also put some serious thought into the range of darks to lights that have been discussed on this thread. Now that I have a day off tomorrow, I plan on going out and creating my "zone" reference guide. I think the visual knowledge would be very helpful as I assess photographs.

IF I were to expose for the sky, the foreground and grass began to look very unnatural and dark. I had to make a decision. What was the most important element to expose for.

For me, it was the face of the boys being photographed. I needed to do a reading off of their face, set the camera to evaluative metering mode, set my camera to the reading on their face and proceed from their.

The sun was brilliant all day long. I got a sunburn...which isn't so bad...but reminded me that I spend too much time indoors. As each group came, I had them face me with the sun to one side. I wanted to use the sun as a side light and keep the boys in a position where they would not have to squint. Nothing ruins a good football picture like a squint.

Once I metered, I decided that the faces were at least a stop darker than the background, so I opened up my flash by 2/3 stop. I was afraid to do much else. I had the Gary Fong diffuser on it, which roughly loses 1 stop so really, by setting the flash up 2/3 stop, the flash was about -1/3. Does that make sense?

I couldn't see the LCD panel, but I could read the histogram and see that I had a fairly even graph and was not blowing out the highlights.

I used manual exposure all day. Finally, on my last set, I decided to do as Bob has suggested, use P mode, set my ISO, and let the Camera do the work.

These two shots were taken roughly 45 - 60 minutes apart. The first shot, I was in control of everything. The second shot, the camera was in control of everything.

I still think that a little more skill development will help me get that sky a little bluer. I probably should have underexposed by one stop and turned my flash up 1 2/3 stops...

Regardless, I have learned a few things. I have seen the work that the other photographer used to do...not good. There is also a "contracted" photographer in the area who does all of the "proper" school sport photos, and the parents repeatedly ask when I will be able to do the photos. For some reason, he shoots a lot of ground and you just can't see the kid...and he has had the contract for YEARS.

Anyway, here are two of my recent efforts at taming the exposure beast.