shooting with difficult skies kestrel shot

spudhead

Legendary Member
Site Supporter
Site Supporter
Followers
13
Following
0
Joined
Oct 28, 2020
Posts
3,319
Likes Received
5,339
Name
Gary
Country
United Kingdom
So feedback and suggestions on how to deal with flat white skies and grey skies, many times I see the kestrels hunting while out walking it is very often in poor lighting against grey or white skies
kestrel 2023 354.jpg
  • ILCE-9
  • Sony FE 200–600mm F5.6–6.3 G OSS (SEL200600G)
  • 600.0 mm
  • ƒ/8
  • 1/3200 sec
  • ISO 3200
, so I do what I can to keep shooting, so advise please
 
I visited Europe in November and it struck me how different it is to live in an environment with almost no shadows. It made me more conscious of the light. I like to photograph architecture so this was a very different game for me. When I got home I started playing around by masking the sky in Lightroom to pull up some detail in the clouds…. And, a couple of times, I changed the hue but that doesn’t reflect onto the subject, which can make it look un-natural (my Lightroom skills are rudimentary at best),
Then I started stripping out the sky and replacing them with a nice one. I couldn’t take that seriously.
Then I started cropping out the sky.

It’s a wonderful problem to consider. A world with no shadow. For many shots I decided to embrace the soft light, though I’ve got a couple of thousand images I haven’t looked at because they didn’t grab me.

Masking the sky to pull up the detail and increase the saturation of the sky
GJF06068.jpeg
  • ILCE-7M4
  • FE 24-240mm F3.5-6.3 OSS
  • 24.0 mm
  • ƒ/6.3
  • 1/100 sec
  • ISO 100

Not a great image.

Here’s one where I embraced the lighting conditions and tried to express the soft sky yielding no shadow….

IMG_5038.jpeg
  • iPhone 14 Pro
  • iPhone 14 Pro back triple camera 6.86mm f/1.78
  • 6.9 mm
  • ƒ/1.8
  • 1/2200 sec
  • ISO 80

I feel this one.
 
Last edited:
Back
Top