I’ll start with Abbey’s question, since her post on the Fishies entry was the first question that came in. Thanks to those of you who have already emailed … you all have sent some really cool inquiries! I’m flattered by the compliments and questions that came in so quickly! Some are going to take some thinking and photo gathering on my part, so bear with me. And if you don’t see your question answered right away, please be patient … I’ll be answering questions in between normal blog business. I’ll still be offering my session sneak peeks and other tidbits.
Abbey wrote, “I am so curious about how you got such great shots at the aquarium. I frequent there and wonder…. Did you do manual? help!! these shots are fabulous!”
The short answer is, Yes. Shooting on manual is key in a tricky lighting situation like this. Today’s digital cameras are brilliantly designed, but the human eye and brain are still smarter. For instance, look at the image of my son looking up at the aquarium window above him. When I looked upon that scene, I saw it exactly as it is appears in this shot. My eye picked up the detail in the water and fish, and it saw the curve of the light falling on my son’s features from above. It saw the soft “pool” of light falling around where he sat. And it interpreted the dark areas just as you see here … dark. Details weren’t necessary in those areas, so the image that came into my brain ignored them, left them dark.
Our brilliant cameras aren’t that smart. Even on Spot Metering mode, the odds of the camera finding the right exposure in a scene like this are small. You could meter off the window above, but you might not get enough light on the child below. Or you could meter off the bright spot on the child’s forehead, but the camera would probably try to brighten up the scene a little more, to find details in those dark areas, and then it could possibly blow out the bright water above.
In general, I encourage any photographer, new or old, to get completely comfortable shooting your camera fully manual. Ok, you can still use auto-focus. 
It takes time, but you will find that shooting manually becomes instinct for you, and you will one day find it hard to shoot any other way. I found that out at the aquarium that day. I started the day shooting manual, as I always do, even for family snapshots. But the light was constantly changing at each exhibit, and there were crowds of people, and my children running everywhere, and I frankly got lazy. So about 30 minutes into our visit, I decided to flip my camera over to Aperture Priority just to catch the snapshots. Well, it drove me NUTS! I spent more time fighting with my camera after that than looking at the fish! The exposures were jumping all over the place, and I missed a couple of snapshots I would have loved because they were grossly under or overexposed. So now I know. Auto mode makes me a bad photographer.
Want to see what I mean? Get ready everyone … I’m about to share a really BAD photograph! When I first turned and saw my son sitting under that window, I still had my camera on Aperture Priority (Semi-Auto) mode. As quickly as I could, I framed and snapped the shutter. This is what my camera gave me on Auto:
YIKES! Right? So in the next 1.5 seconds, I switched the camera back to manual. This scene being so low in light, I set my aperture for f/2.8, the widest possible on this lens (Canon 24-70 f/2.8L). I looked through the viewfinder, and watched the in camera meter as I moved from the window to my son’s face, mentally comparing and averaging the two readings. Then I set my shutter for 1/80, even faster than the meter told me, because I still knew that the camera was trying to balance the entire scene, though I was most concerned with capturing the rim of light on my son and leaving the rest dark. Presto.
You are the artist. Your camera is nothing but the tool. Picasso didn’t paint his masterpieces just because he had an expensive paintbrush. He knew exactly what to do with the brush and the pigments. You give up your control as the artist when you let your camera do too much thinking for you. Find your vision and then use the camera to bring it to life. Thank you for your question and kind words, Abbey. Hope this helps!
