How to expose foggy scenes

How to take photos of foggy scenes? [Repost]

The rules of fog formation

Southern my country is foggy, especially in spring or winter in the mountainous areas of Zhejiang and southern Anhui. , the local small environment is relatively isolated from the outside temperature and humidity, and fog often forms when the temperature difference is obvious. Therefore, if you want to shoot foggy scenes, you can choose a place surrounded by villages, rivers and mountains. When the humidity and temperature reach a certain difference between day and night Mist will form. Generally, fog forms in the middle of the night. As long as there is no wind, the fog will gradually dissipate in the early morning as the sun rises. Photographers can choose a suitable location in advance and take photos while the fog is dispersing. Another situation is that if the sky is clear after raining that day, fog will definitely occur the next day. Especially if it clears up after heavy rain and the sun is strong in the afternoon, there will be heavy fog in the morning of the next day. Therefore, photographers only need to go to the mountains early the next day after a rain to take pictures, and they can usually capture the mist-shrouded landscape. If you choose the environment properly, you may be lucky enough to capture a "paradise"-like effect. Photographers who like to take photos of foggy scenes vividly refer to the landscape villages shrouded in fog as "heaven and earth", which to a certain extent illustrates the charm of foggy scene photography.

Characteristics of fog

Light in foggy days is scattered light, so objects in foggy scenes have their own characteristics. One is that the perspective relationship is more obvious. Its shape and color are often affected by fog concentration. The thicker the fog or the farther the scene is from the lens, the lighter the color will be, and vice versa. Therefore, the objects in the distant view often appear in an understated white or light tone, and the details in the confusion are vague and unclear, so they have a strange hazy beauty and the charm of traditional Chinese painting. The close-up view in the fog is still relatively clear and can basically reflect the original colors and details. The close-up and distant views are organically combined to form a unique charm like traditional Chinese ink painting of the foggy scene. In fact, shooting foggy scenes is like treating black and white photography. It is necessary to reflect as many excessive levels of black, white and gray as possible. The more levels, the higher the quality of the image. It is necessary to reflect the relatively thick tones in the foreground, the neutral gray in the middle ground, and the very light gray in the distant ground that is almost as close to white as possible. In addition, the fog is like a huge barrier. Through the fog, cluttered scenery in the distance can be blocked, making the background appear simpler and brighter.

Light for shooting foggy scenes

When shooting foggy scenes, you should also pay attention to the direction of the light, because foggy days are not cloudy days. Although it is scattered light like cloudy days, as long as you take it seriously Through observation, you will still find that the direction of light exposure is divided into reverse and forward directions. Generally speaking, if you want to obtain a clear sense of perspective, you can shoot with backlight or side light. When shooting foggy scenes with backlight, the characteristics of near-dense and far-distant can significantly increase the perspective effect of the picture. The distant mountains in the backlit foggy scene have a more layered feel. Different gray scales can be seen in the mountains, and the tones reflected in the front, middle and distant views of buildings, trees, etc. vary from dark to light, with rich changes. The characteristic of fog when shooting along the light is that the color is relatively good, and it is suitable to be expressed in color form. However, the perspective space relationship of the picture is easy to be dull, and there is no three-dimensional sense such as side light or backlight. Therefore, in practice, it must be based on the characteristics of the object to be expressed. Flexible use of light.

Most foggy scenes are shot under scattered light conditions. In fact, when there is a thin layer of fog, even shooting night scenes will have very good results, especially when it starts to get dark and the sky has not completely changed. The shooting effect is best when it is dark.

Exposure when photographing foggy scenes

Photographing foggy scenes requires very high exposure, and special attention should be paid to exposure accuracy. Fog images are mainly light-toned, with only a small amount of content being dark-toned. In traditional photography, the exposure for foggy scenes needs to be increased by 0.5~1EV, that is, an additional 1 EV is added to the exposure obtained during metering. Stop the exposure. If you need to process the picture to have a more high-key effect (that is, the color is more elegant), you can increase the exposure by 1 stop when shooting. If you want to appear more natural and retain the level of the highlight, you can increase the exposure by 0.3~0.5 stops appropriately. This Exposure processing methods still have reference significance in digital photography. Exposure compensation levels on current digital cameras are very detailed and can be increased or decreased by 0.3, 0.7, or 1.5 steps so that photographers can obtain the exposure that meets their own requirements. For photographers with little experience, they can also check the effect through timely playback after shooting and make necessary exposure corrections at any time.

However, exposure compensation cannot be generalized. It mainly depends on the proportion of fog in the picture. The greater the proportion of fog, the more positive exposure compensation is needed. If the area occupied by fog is small, or It is not necessarily necessary to increase the exposure if it is not within the metering area, because once a digital photo is overexposed, it will be more troublesome in post-processing, especially the highlight areas that are prone to losing levels.

White balance control when shooting foggy scenes

Since the white fog occupies a lot of area in the foggy scene photos, the requirements for white balance are relatively high. First of all, it should be noted that it is normal for images taken at different shooting times to have different tones. Generally, the fog taken before the sun appears has a bluish tone. This bluish tone is also an important feature of morning photography. When the sun shines on the fog, this part of the fog will appear red and yellow. This low color temperature is also a normal reflection of the low color temperature of natural light and should be appropriately retained. If you want to remove the blue tint, you can use cloudy white balance mode, which will naturally add a yellow tint to the picture. As for the yellow tint under low color temperature, it generally does not need to be eliminated. If it needs to be eliminated, it can be processed in image processing software later.

As the shooting time passes and the sun gradually rises, the color temperature of the light will tend to normal. Generally, the automatic white balance of digital cameras can restore colors to a more normal level. If photographers want to use simple means to avoid affecting the color balance due to carelessness, they must first check the color of the picture at any time, and secondly, use automatic white balance. Generally speaking, It is said that automatic white balance can also achieve more normal color restoration when shooting foggy scenes.

Opportunity to take photos of foggy scenes

Fog appears in different forms in life. Some fogs are commonly known as "dense fog". The whole world seems to be covered with a layer of white gauze. Such foggy scenes are relatively monotonous and can be taken relatively calmly. Because there is no change in half an hour or even an hour, fog in cities often behaves like this. The fog in mountainous areas is different. It is called "cloud and mist". The characteristic of clouds and fog is that they show different changes under different conditions, and the changes are quite rich. The ideal clouds and mist are rising and drifting in the mountains with the change of wind direction. They will change every second, so you must seize the opportunity to snap the photo and activate the shutter in time.

Pay attention to the use of foreground

The most important thing to avoid when expressing foggy scenes is lack of sufficient contrast. An important means to improve the contrast is to use the foreground. Therefore, when expressing foggy scenes, it is usually combined with the foreground to compose the scene. There is no foreground. Fog scenes often appear too light and not powerful enough. The foreground can effectively change the contrast of the picture and increase the thickness of the photo. Because dark tones or brighter colors in the foreground can effectively enrich the picture, enhance contrast, and create visual contrast. Sometimes there are only light tones in the middle and distant background without dark tones in the foreground, which often gives the illusion of overexposure.

Therefore, it is recommended to choose content with a relatively clear relationship between the foreground, middle shot, and long shot when framing, and include different scenes together, which is beneficial to expressing the unique perspective relationship of the foggy scene, and it is easier to obtain rich layers. . Generally, it is best to capture objects with certain outlines in the foreground and contrasting light and dark colors with the background. It is best to occupy a larger area in the middle ground. The distant view is the basis for setting off the foreground and middle ground. Through the contrast of different tones in the front, middle and distant views , the picture levels appear richer. There are many foregrounds available in nature, such as large trees with beautiful outlines, buildings with certain lines, reeds by the river, and even people of a certain proportion can become effective foregrounds. The farther the distance in the fog, the shallower the shadow tone. The foreground not only effectively improves contrast, but also increases the sense of space.

About post-processing computer processing

For photographers who have a certain foundation in black and white photography, it is also very interesting to process foggy scenes into black and white effects in the later stage, because foggy scenes originally do not have many colors. After being processed into black and white, the color tone is simpler and the foggy scene has more charm. Some advanced digital cameras, such as Nikon D200 and Canon 20D, have modes for shooting black and white films, which provides a basis for directly obtaining black and white films. However, general digital cameras can still only take color photos, so it requires adjustment in the electronic darkroom to obtain black and white photos.

There are many ways to process color digital photos into black and white. Generally, you can use Photoshop image processing software to process them. There are three common methods: one is through "Decolorization" in the "Adjustment" menu; "Grayscale" in "Mode" discards color information; third, adjusting "Hue" can also obtain a black and white effect.

Usually, the contrast of color images after being processed into black and white effects is often weak, so it is necessary to make appropriate adjustments through "Brightness/Contrast" or in "Curves". When adjusting, please note that if you use the "Grayscale" mode to convert to black and white film, when using "Curves" to adjust the contrast, the direction of pulling the curve is opposite to that of the general adjustment: upward to deepen the tone, and downward to weaken the tone. In order to protect the original manuscript in case of emergency, it is better to process the backup manuscript in black and white or modify the original manuscript and save it as a new file.