Shoot into the Light to Add a Golden Halo
The old rule says shooting into the sun is a mistake, but with today’s better lenses and bigger ISO ranges, this boring light technique need not limit our creativity. To create the feeling of dimension in still photos, look for side lighting or dramatic backlighting illuminating a subject. Light from these angles creates highlights and shadows that gives the perception of depth or shows off the fantastic textures of fur and feathers.
To achieve the best results, the light should be behind the subject and a bit to the side. Ideally, the animal is still lit up on the side facing the camera. A technique called bracketing can help you get the exposure right before the animal moves.
Bracketing is the process by which multiple photographs are taken of a particular subject with some of the settings slightly modified, such as shutter speed, f-stop, or aperture. Check to see if your camera has an automatic bracketing feature. Most digital cameras have a bracketing feature and will take three pictures in quick succession while you hold down the shutter button. More advanced cameras will allow you to let you bracket exposure, flash, and white balance with settings such as the size of the EV step and number of frames customizable.
In the typical setup the first photo will be the way the camera reads the light, the second will be slightly darker, and the third slightly lighter. If you are in aperture priority mode, the bracketing will change the shutter speed, in shutter priority mode it will vary the aperture.
If the animal is not moving and you have time to review results on the LCD, using exposure compensation (the button with the symbol +/-) can achieve the same as the rapid bracketing. Using the histogram together with the Image Highlights (when the washed out portions flash) can help you decide if you have an acceptable balance of exposed and overexposed halo. If you like to try HDR techniques in Photoshop, save the different exposures to use later in your composite.
The dramatic backlighting on the black-backed jackal in the sample image highlights its whiskers and face while the side nearest to the camera is exposed enough to show some color and detail while preserving the overall sunset mood of the photo.
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