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Burning & Dodging >

If you're familiar with burning and dodging, skip ahead to Methods.

Burning In & Dodging the Old-fashioned Way

Burning and dodging have been used since the beginning of photography.

When you burn in something, you're darkening an area on a photograph.

For example, if a sky is too bright, you can burn in the sky to make it darker.

When you dodge something, you're lightening an area on a photograph.

For example, if you can't see someone's eyes because they're shadowed by a hat, you can dodge the eyes to make them lighter.

There are three reasons why you should consider burning and dodging.

You can use burning and dodging to emphasize and deemphasize parts of a photograph.

By darkening and lightening, you can control where the viewer's travels around a photograph, and where it lingers.

If you add shadows, or darken shadows, you can add depth, texture, and volume to a photograph.

In photography—WYSINWYG—what you see is not what you get.

Camera sensors increase the contrast of a scene.

Let's say you're photographing a picnic scene.

The sky is a deep blue with Ansel-Adams clouds.

The picnic table, in the shadow of a tree, is resplendent with gastronomic bonhomie.

However, when photographed:

• The sky will become a washed-out blue.

• The picnic table will be hard to see in a deep, dark, shadow.

The viewer's eyes are:

• Pained by the brightness of the sky.

• Frustrated by not seeing the picnic table clearly.

You'll have to burn in the too-bright sky and dodge the picnic table in the shadow.

The increase in contrast in photographs is not a new problem.

Berenice Abbott, in a 1944 Popular Photography Magazine article, The Coming World of Photography, described the problem.

Abbott mentioned how you can't get the bright area of a scene, and the dark area, on the same photograph:

Latitude: A dark deep foreground should have as much tonality as a bright sky, without sacrificing one or the other.

Sixty-some years later, it's still a problem.

Here's an example.

The exposure was set for the sunny part of the scene.

The rafter's hats have shaded their faces.

Here are some possible solutions—that wouldn't have helped.

Possible Solution	Why It Wouldn't Work
Use a reflector	Too far away
Use fill flash	Too far away
Use a more telephoto focal length, and fill the frame with just their faces.	1) Didn't have a telephoto zoom along 2) Wanted the raft in the photograph
Use spot metering to measure the light on their faces, and set the exposure for their faces.	Their faces would be well-exposed, but the rest of the scene would be washed out.
Come back on an overcast day when they light is less contrasty.	They wouldn't be there.
Move in closer with waders	Not with my expensive camera!