EXPOSURE
) n the same way that focus is most commonly
used in a standardized way, to produce a kind
of technical accuracy in a photograph, exposure is
often also assumed to have a “correct” role. I should
stress that this is how it is seen conventionally,
not how it can or ought to be used. Deciding
on the right exposure involves both technical
considerations and judgement. From the technical
side of things, the upper and lower limits of
exposure are set first by what is visible, second by
the expected appearance. In other words, part of
the task of the exposure setting is to normalize the
view—to approximate how we see the real scene.
The conventions of exposure have much
in common with those of focus. The eye has a
ANGLEPHOTOGRAPHOFTHESPACEBETWEEN
tendency to move towards the areas of “normal”
contrast in a scene, therefore, is likely to direct
attention from shadow to light, while lower
contrast allows the eye to wander across the
frame, as the two versions of the hills at sunrise
show. A variation of this is the radial difference in
brightness due to vignetting, quite common with
wide-angle lenses, because their typical design
allows less light to reach the edges than the center.
In color, exposure can have a critical effect on
saturation, depending on the process. Kodachrome
film, first produced in 1935, achieved prominence
in professional photography from the 1950s
onward when it was used by widely reproduced
photographers such as Ernst Haas and Art Kane.
Its unique technology favored underexposure to
give rich, saturated colors, but it was intolerant
exposing for the highlights that has dominated
color photography, more or less, ever since—
with particular significance in digital capture.
Two dominant features of exposure in
photography that could be considered graphic
elements in their own right are silhouette and
flare, and we’ll return to these at the end of the
book when we consider the changing syntax of
photography. Exposing for the highlights is a
precondition for silhouette, in which the complete
absence of detail in the unlit foreground shape
leads to a technique of choosing orientation,
viewpoint, and timing to communicate by means
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