Controlling the brighter elements in a scene takes some planning during shooting, and some work in post-processing but ultimately your images will be stronger. You’ll also have way more control over the final image where you the creator of the image guide the viewer’s eye purposefully.

Brightness is well controlled in this image. Along with compositional curves, part of what makes this image work is that other bright elements in the scene are not competing with the bride. All eyes are on her as she makes her entrance. Image by Dominic Fuizzotto

Image by Richard Sparey — This lovely image of delicious pears suffers slightly from what I call weak edges. This causes our eye to wander out of the frame. It’s more noticeable on printed white paper or on a pure white background.

The same image with the edges burnt in (darkened) quite a bit to show the effect. This helps keep our eyes from wandering. Thanks to Richard for allowing me to use this image.

Links /resources mentioned in this podcast:
– August’s regular assignment on the Photography.ca forum — Numbers — Photograph something with a number
– August’s level 2 assignment on the Photography.ca forum — Creating counterpoints
– Brightness problems and distracting elements — Podcast #44
– Neutral density filters and graduated ND filters — Interview with Darwin Wiggett —  Podcast #77
– Dominic Fuizzotto Photography
– Richard Sparey Photography

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Thanks for listening and keep on shooting!

Links mentioned in this podcast:
Transcript to photography podcast #1 — being aware of the background
Histograms in digital photography

The 2 images below show how brightness issues and distracting elements can take the viewer’s eye away from the subject. Shot 1 is unmanipulated. Shot 2 has the brighter elements burned in (darkened) very quickly just to illustrate the point. Many thanks to merman from our photography forum for allowing me to use his photograph as a teaching tool.

Thanks as always to Cybasumo, Chris, Sergey and De3montecarlo for recent comments and suggestions. We LOVE comments and suggestions so please send more.

You can download this photography podcast directly by clicking the preceding link or listen to it almost immediately with the embedded player below.