Sharing a shoot and the steps where I'm using the gray card method to avoid blown skies and bring in the sunset. You can use a gray card to set flash exposure instead of using a light meter.
"By introducing an 18% gray card into the scene and placing it in such a way that it is in the same lighting as your main subject that you are trying to expose, you can now take your spot meter reading from the gray card and you will have a “perfect” exposure for that subject in that lighting. In doing this, white will be white, black will be black and all other tonal values will fall into place." - Steve Kozak, M.Photog., M.Cr., CPP
I had the subject set up and we taking photos along the river side. I turned towards the sunset over the river. I take a shot and I can see that the skies are blown. Look at all that white. I can barely see the bridge.
Gray card to the rescue. I turn off my flash. Take a shot using only the ambient light. Look at how beautiful the sky actually is.
Then, using the gray card positioned at my subject and facing the camera, I set the exposure of just the subject and the flash. So I don't adjust my camera settings. I know the sky looks great. The only thing I touch is the trigger to adjust the flash settings to have my histogram right down the middle so I know my exposure is perfect.
The final image now has a beautiful sky and a perfectly exposed subject. All photos used are “straight out of camera” with no edits.
PPAM would like to thank Christine for sharing her time and talent in making this blog post for us.
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