Tech

Here's the best way to make every photo you snap beautiful — on any device

Rafi Letzter

2016-02-16T19:42:55Z

Photography is hard. And all the jabber out there doesn't make it easier.

If you read some blogs, you'll end up believing that it's impossible to get a good shot unless you're working in manual mode. Some insist you only ever shoot RAW files. Others obsess over finding the perfect camera. And all of that can help.

But for most people, it's just way too much trouble.

Here's a secret though: 99% of those expert tips and tricks are just means of taking more control over your exposure — something you can adjust with a simple thumb-swipe on your smartphone.

If your exposure is off, everything else in your image will look off as well (no matter how much you edit or filter it later). If you nail it, the whole image improves. This is as true for your Insta-selfies as your artwork.

Here's a simple explanation of what exposure is, and how to wield it as a powerful tool in your image-making.

Exposure is the total amount of light your camera absorbs in its sensor.

My phone lets me do this with a swipe of my thumb. Here's a shot of Tech Insider's newsroom with the exposure way up.

This is a great exposure if I want to focus on people's faces and don't care what's out the window.

Here's the same scene exposed all the way down.

If I were only interested in seeing out the window, this would be a good option.

Here's the exposure my phone chose without my fiddling.

Tech Insider newsroom medium automatic exposure

Left to its own devices, my smartphone opted for a middle ground that didn't expose anything particularly well.

When the light is bright and uniform, exposure is easy — your camera can probably figure it out for itself.

But that situation is actually pretty rare. You can find it in the shade on a sunny day, or on very hazy days, like the one in the shot above.

Usually a shot will have a mix of light and dark. A good exposure matches the light coming off your subject, not the brightest lights or darkest shadows.

In mixed light, this can take a few tries.

I shot the image above at an improv show in a dark shed with ad-hoc lights — and way under-exposed it. Thanks to a powerful camera sensor and the magic of Photoshop, I was able to bring light back in after the fact. But the result is off-color, dingy, and processed-looking.

When not enough (or too much) light hits your sensor, the resulting image will never look quite right.

But some trial-and-error can help a great deal.

This image was much better-exposed in camera (though still not perfect). Here, the mid-range of the image matches the light coming off the subject's face so I didn't need to do much editing. With less editing, every part of the shot — from the darkest shadows to the brightest highlights — looks more real and natural.

This can be a big challenge on sunny days.

shadow exposure beach ice cream boardwalk

You'd think noon on a sunny day would be a great time to shoot — there's light everywhere.

But depending on the angle of your subject to the sun, you can easily under-expose an image. With bright light shining into your lens but faces in shadow, your camera will struggle to properly expose the image on its own.

In this image I ignored the bright sky and beach and exposed for the red glow of the boardwalk off my subjects' faces.

The trick is to find the one part of your image you care most about and adjust the exposure until it looks perfect.

sunny day exposure jewish man women's section western wall

In this case, I exposed for the right side of the man's face — stepping it up just a bit so the left would also be visible. As long as that's nailed, the dark shadow of his jacket or bright glare off the wall don't matter much.

Your camera can easily trick you.

In this shot, my camera thought I had exposed way too bright — letting too much light in. That's because of the spotlights shining right into the lens. Left to it's own devices, it would have gone way darker. But I knew the woman's face was most important, and it was in shadow.

Another all-too-common exposure error happens when shooting darker skin tones.

skin tone exposure — A collection of women of color presented with artificially light skin on magazine covers, next to more properly-exposed images of their faces. Magazines and Getty Images

Many cameras — and photographers — make the same bad judgement when exposing for darker skin. They apply the norms of properly exposed white skin to people with darker skin and end up erasing a lot of the richness and tone from their subjects' faces.

There's a lot to say on this subject, but the short version is: try to expose for how your subjects look in real life, not the flattening average your camera aims for. An exposure nudge up or down can real whole new levels of color or depth across the spectrum of human skintones.

Once you've mastered the basics of exposure, there are some next-level tricks you can try out.

When most of your frame is in shade, expose for the sunlight — and wait for your subject to step into it.

These cheerleaders twirled around on the field for a long time, but I couldn't make an image I liked. Then I saw them headed for the only beam of direct sunlight around and hurriedly lowered my exposure to match it. When they passed through it, I snapped, and suddenly they contrasted nicely with the background in rich sunset tones.

When your background it brightly lit, you can expose for it and throw your subject into silhouette.

There was a lot of light shining off the pool during this swim lesson. I lowered my exposure until the bright water showed up as a midtone, then got this interesting silhouette.

An overexposed background can help your subject stand out.

Here's an album cover I shot for a Chicago musician in the middle of the street on a sunny day. Exposing for the side of his face in the sun's shadow, I blew out the bright background — drawing all the attention to his expression.

And a careful underexposure can emphasize the details.

I notice a harsh floodlight reflecting off this football player's face. Exposing all the way down, I caught just the floodlit details and blacked out the rest of the scene.