One of the major challenges of painting outdoors is the need to
gather enough visual information about our subject in a brief moment of perfect
light. In rushing to capture the light in nature, it is easy to lose those
subtle details and tonal changes in the shadow areas of our paintings. In those
situations when we won't be able to return to a given plein air painting site again and therefore
must get all we can in the first go, the camera can be a very valuable tool for
recording some of the visual details that we may not have time to capture in our
plein air studies. However, the camera does not see at all the way the human
eye and brain sees. Therein lies the danger: of relying too heavily on our
photos when working back in the studio.
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| Plein air painting set-up for Battery study. |
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What the camera sees.
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These illustrations show one of the problems inherent in
photography for which our eyes and brains automatically compensate--exposure
selection. When we look from a very bright area to an adjacent dark or shadow
area, the eye adjusts automatically to give us the full range of tones in those
shadows. As we are painting, our eyes constantly shift back and forth over the
entire scene in what are called micro-saccades, which allow us to build up an
image of a bright scene that also includes all the tones in the shadows as
well.
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| Detail, painted back into shadow areas.
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Studio enlargement with plein air study and
first enlargement in background.
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The camera cannot do this. It can only expose one thing or another at a
time. To expose the bright sky properly, the shadows plug up; to expose the
shadows, the sky goes white and featureless. Our choice then is to make
separate exposures for each and create an HDR composite in Photoshop. The
result is still a big compromise compared to what our eyes can take in.
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| On the Battery III by John Hulsey, 54 x 72, oil painting. |
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In our
view, the best approach is to work at developing a better memory for details
and consciously locking those in our visual memory to call upon later in the studio. Putting the
detail back into the shadow areas can add the kind of verisimilitude to our paintings
that gives them life. Photos can be helpful, but they are no substitute for
seeing.
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--John and Ann