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Balancing scenic shots
Q Should I expose for the land or the sky when shooting landscapes?
Jeremy Davies
A Generally speaking, the sky is usually around 2 stops brighter than the land in a typical scenic shot, so if you want to get a ‘perfect’ exposure, you need to find a way to bring them into harmony and balance the overall scene to reduce the difference in brightness. If you expose for the highlights in the sky, your land will be underexposed, while if you expose for the land, your sky may be very pale or even bleached out.
This problem isn’t new; landscapers have faced this for generations. The traditional way to address it is to make the sky darker using a graduated Neutral Density filter (or ND Grad). I like this approach, as it means everything is addressed in-camera, and once the filter is in place – effectively darkening the