LEXsample :: photography tips for Antarctica

About light

The most beautiful light is indirect sunlight at sunrise or sunset. Direct sunshine is often very intense and causes the snow to loose its patterns and structure, and shadows will just become plain black. Try to photograph animals with contrasting colours (such as black and white on penguins and cormorants) at the beginning or end of the day, or when they are sitting in the shadow. Personally I have a preference for cloudy days.

Never use a flash to take photographs of animals. You will never know if you disturb them, even if they seem to be undisturbed. Switch off automatic flash on automatic cameras.

A skylight filter will give you more contrast in clouds on a sunny day.

Overexposure or underexposure

Landscapes that are mainly white should best be overexposured a little bit. Most cameras tend to compensate for all the white light by reducing the incoming light, so you need to correct this by overexposuring your picture, say, one stop.

Overexposure should also be set for a dark subject surrounded by a light background, such as a dark animal in the snow or a bird against a clear sky. Without overexposure your subject on the final photograph will be too dark.

Underexposure is required when you take a photographs of a light subject against a back background: take a white tern on dark rocks as an example. Without underexposure the bird would be too light on the final picture.

Whether you need to over- or underexposure, and how much, depends on:

your camera - which part of the sensor is used to measure the subject? Did you select the area? (only possible on professional cameras).
the amount and intensity of the light (white) surrounding the subject.
the film - slide film is more sensitive to over/underexposure than photo film. Digital SLR's are sensible too, but offer a bit more control since corrections can be made through imaging software. This is even more applicable to RAW/NEF files that can be corrected before saving them in the final JPG format. However, it is always best to set your exposure correct from the very beginning.

As you will understand, it is recommended to practice your photo gear before you leave.

TIP :: Exposure lock
Instead of over/underexposure you can also use the 'exposure lock' feature (on semi-professional camera's only). You just zoom in to your subject, (isolating it from its background), let the camera select the exposure, lock these values (press the appropriate button) and then zoom out, chose your composition, focus and... shoot.

TIP :: Correcting light afterwards using RAW/NEF format
The advantage of workign with RAW/NEF files (digital SLR's only) is that you have more control over the exposure. Over/underexposure is one of the elements you can control, but there are other settings too (such as sharpness, saturation)