In both cases above, in the introduction, if you always shoot the same kind of images, you will learn from your mistakes of course and you won’t miss the exposure, eventually. But as soon as you get out of your comfort zone and try new things, that’s a different story.
Finally, when I am culling images after a shoot, I am facing two challenges when it comes to exposure: one which looks trivial (detect the very poorly exposed images) and one which is tricky: flag images that are not so well exposed, still usable but below the quality level I can deliver. So that I can improve. And even if the first issue (detect poorly exposed images) is easy, it can be tedious to cull them. And culling is boring anyway. That’s why this rule has been implemented in the software Futura Photo, which goals are to facilitate the culling process and other steps needed before the post-processing.
When it comes to exposure, I like to write there are 2 different issues:
- Clipping and burning
- Overall exposure of the image
“Clipping and burning” means missing to expose properly some parts of the images whereas it was possible. I have already detailed this problem in a previous post and this rule is also implemented into Futura Photo for the same reason.
Overall exposure is a different problem: you can have missed to expose as needed the image without burning or clipping (again in a significant way) your photo. Let’s have a look at the next image: