Early Saturday morning I went out with my father to shoot some scenes at one of the waterfront parks near us. It was a beautiful morning, especially with the recent cool front that took the sting of heat and humidity out of the air. The sun was bright and bold even by 7:00 AM. It was also dancing in and out of some very thick cumulus clouds, making an ever-changing stage for exposures.

Gaggles of seagulls were active, perching anywhere and everywhere they thought was a decent vantage point for the surveying of food. The shot here (full image at bottom of this page) posed an interesting subject matter to me, aesthetically. As you can see in the shot, there were three main areas of potential exposure metering: the sky, the gull and the sign. Let’s take a look at my decision process.

The angle of approach for this shot was closely into the sun at about 30 degrees to my left. If I were to meter for the sky, I could get a strong silhouette on both the sign and the gull perched above. Taken into post-processing, I could bring up the details of the clouds and punch the blacks (to make sure the silhouette was devoid of details as it should be). While an interesting notion, I thought the photo would lose the story-telling aspect with silhouettes only.

Another option would be to meter for the gull. This would significantly over-expose the sign (though it would likely still remain readable), and completely over-expose the background sky. While the gull is the main subject of the photo, I didn’t want to meter for it for two reasons: 1) the story here, to me, is the interaction between the gull and the sign, and 2) exposing for the gull would place it and the sign against an almost pure white background (pulling it out of context of their surroundings, as if I shot it against a white backdrop).

So, the answer for me (in the vast eight to ten seconds I had before the gull flew off after its next suspected meal) was to expose for the sign (mostly). Note that I underexposed the metering of the sign slightly to punch its colors a bit as well as give the gull a silhouette “feel.” The slight under-exposure was furthered in post-processing with a change to the contrast.

I hope these notes have made you think a bit about the options you have when metering a given shot. As always, comments and questions are welcomed (and encouraged) below in the comments section!

Happy shooting.

EXIF data

Canon 5D Mark ii body, Canon EF 70-200mm L f/4.0 IS USM lens

Exposure: 1/640 second

Aperture: f/8.0

ISO: 100

Focal length: 200mm

Manual exposure mode, Auto white balance mode

Strobist data: none