PHOTOGRAPHY EXPOSED
by John Peters A.R.P.S.
BURNING AND DODGING
Quite simply, most photographs can be improved by emphasising the good or stronger points, hiding or making less prominent, the bad or weaker points. This is where burning and dodging come into play.
BURNING AND DODGING
Burning and dodging are advanced techniques, best not attempted by beginners, but can be attepted once you feel ready. Again, it costs nothing in digital and you can repeat the process as often as you want. Burning and dodging IMO are two of the most important techniques to learn in advanced editing. Beginners, or people fairly new to photography can forget about burning and dodging, but later on once the basics have been mastered, if you want to improve your photographs further, perhaps even learn a particular stlyle, learn to burn and dodge. I can't stress enough the difference it will make to your photography. It should be subtle, never obvious. Remember, you can undo when experimenting. I use Affinity Photo for controlled burning or dodging.
TOP TIP For BURNING, read darkening parts of the image,
for DODGING, read lightening parts of the image.
TOP TIP Little and often is the secret for good burning & dodging. Start at around 25%, burning & dodging should never be too obvious unless for a particular effect.
Duddo stones near Berwick-upon-tweed. Advanced techniques, Burning & Dodging, HDR to bring out the sky, EB all used. The exposure was different for many parts of the image. Trying to represent all of the stones was a challege too. A tripod was used, goes without saying. Although this was achieved with Photoshop, Affinity Photo could be used with a cheaper, one-off purchase price. No, Affinity don't sponser me in any way, just stating a fact!
Images such as the finished DUDDO stones don't just happen, it's usually down to hard work and recording an expanded range of tones by using HDR or my extreme bracketing method. In this case burning/dodging was applied and I've sectioned off the main areas showing the exposure adjustment as I remember them. The shot is exposed for the land, bracketing was used although I've shown the shot as the camera was likely to record it when metering for the land. Washed out skies result.
TOP TIP If you want your images to stand out, learn when to born and dodge.
In the above photo, the 'B' signifies areas of the photo that received burning. The sky was replaced as it was a low contrast kind of day with flat clouds. This replacement would now be done in Paint.Net using layers. It's a good example of burning to improve the overall impact of the image. Burning / Dodging may not be everyones cup of tea, horses for courses, but the chances are that type of person probably doesn't know how to Burn / Dodge, has never tried it, or has never competed.