Photography is an art form, yet as photographers, we’re at a great disadvantage. A painter can approach a scene and build in dramatic light, an impending storm, a howling wolf set upon a rocky precipice, or a bald eagle swooping from the water with trout held firmly in talons. A photographer on the other hand starts with a canvas that’s already painted and has to eliminate distractions within the scene. A photographer has to find serenity amongst chaos and confusion and has to wait for quintessential events to unfold and be lucky enough they do. So how does a photographer find pleasing compositions within all this complexity?

In any photo, the subject will be the first element to attract the viewer’s attention. Ideally, the supporting details will lead the viewer around the photo while at the same time, enhance the center of interest. If the subordinate details work in harmony with the main subject, the picture will show balance and be deemed successful. A poorly composed photo will confuse the viewer and lose his interest.

Good composition starts with choosing a good subject. The subject should inspire the photographer. If the subject isn’t intriguing, chances are the photo will reflect this. What it is that provoked you to raise the camera to your eye? Was it a strong color, the shape or texture, an interesting face or was it emotional? The final composition should be dictated by the answers to these questions.

Once a good subject is chosen, selectively eliminate all distractions that impede the viewer from focusing on the center of interest. Decide what should be photographed and emphasize that aspect while viewing the scene through the camera. Study the setting and decide if what you’ve seen with the naked eye is conveyed through the lens. As you continue to ask yourself questions about what attracted you to the subject, conclude whether or not you’ve gotten to the root of the attraction. Persevere in your quest to eliminate unnecessary elements by moving to the left, right, higher or lower until all is finely tuned. Deciding what to exclude is equally as important as knowing what to include.

Every modern DSLR has something called “Metering Mode”, also known as “Camera Metering”, “Exposure Metering” or simply “Metering”. Knowing how metering works and what each of the metering modes does is important in photography, because it helps photographers control their exposure with minimum effort and take better pictures in unusual lighting situations. In this “understanding metering modes” article, I will explain what metering is, how it works and how you can use it for your digital photography.

Metering is how your camera determines what the correct shutter speed and aperture should be, depending on the amount of light that goes into the camera and the sensitivity of the sensor. Back in the old days of photography, cameras were not equipped with a light “meter”, which is a sensor that measures the amount and intensity of light. Photographers had to use hand-held light meters to determine the optimal exposure. Obviously, because the work was shot on film, they could not preview or see the results immediately, which is why they religiously relied on those light meters.

Today, every DSLR has an integrated light meter that automatically measures the reflected light and determines the optimal exposure. The most common metering modes in digital cameras today are:

1. Matrix Metering (Nikon), also known as Evaluative Metering (Canon)
2. Center-weighted Metering
3. Spot Metering (Nikon), also known as Partial Metering (Canon)

You can see the camera meter in action when you shoot in Manual Mode – look inside the viewfinder and you will see bars going left or right, with a zero in the middle, as illustrated below.

Metering shown in Nikon Viewfinder

If you point your camera at a very bright area, the bars will go to “+” side, indicating that there is too much light for the current exposure settings. If you point your camera at a very dark area, the bars will go to the “-” side, indicating that there is not enough light. You would then need to increase or decrease your shutter speed to get to “0″, which is the optimal exposure, according to your camera meter.

A camera meter is not only useful for just the Manual Mode – when you choose another mode such asAperture Priority, Shutter Priority or Program Mode, the camera automatically adjusts the settings based on what it reads from the meter.

Camera meters work great when the scene is lit evenly. However, it gets problematic and challenging for light meters to determine the exposure, when there are objects with different light levels and intensities. For example, if you are taking a picture of the blue sky with no clouds or sun in the frame, the image will be correctly exposed, because there is just one light level to deal with. The job gets a little harder if you add a few clouds into the image – the meter now needs to evaluate the brightness of the clouds versus the brightness of the sky and try to determine the optimal exposure. As a result, the camera meter might brighten up the sky a little bit in order to properly expose the white clouds – otherwise, the clouds would look too white or “overexposed”.

What would happen if you added a big mountain into the scene? Now the camera meter would see that there is a large object that is much darker (relative to the clouds and the sky), and it would try to come up with something in the middle, so that the mountain is properly exposed as well. By default, the camera meter looks at the light levels in the entire frame and tries to come up with an exposure that balances the bright and the dark areas of the image.

MATRIX METERING

Matrix Metering or Evaluative Metering mode is the default metering mode on most DSLRs. It works similarly to the above example by dividing the entire frame into multiple “zones”, which are then all analyzed on individual basis for light and dark tones. One of the key factors (in addition to color, distance, subjects, highlights, etc) that affects matrix metering, is where the camera focus point is set to. After reading information from all individual zones, the metering system looks at where you focused within the frame and marks it more important than all other zones. There are many other variables used in the equation, which differ from manufacturer to manufacturer. Nikon, for example, also compares image data to a database of thousands of pictures for exposure calculation.

You should use this mode for most of your photography, since it will generally do a pretty good job in determining the correct exposure. I leave my camera metering mode on matrix metering for most of my photography needs, including landscape and portrait photography.

CENTER WEIGHTED METERING

Using the whole frame for determining the correct exposure is not always desirable. What if you are trying to take a headshot of a person with the sun behind? This is where center-weighted metering comes in handy. Center-weighted Metering evaluates the light in the middle of the frame and its surroundings and ignores the corners. Compared to Matrix Metering, Center-weighted Metering does not look at the focus point you select and only evaluates the middle area of the image.

Use this mode when you want the camera to prioritize the middle of the frame, which works great for close-up portraits and relatively large subjects that are in the middle of the frame. For example, if you were taking a headshot of a person with the sun behind him/her, then this mode would expose the face of the person correctly, even though everything else would probably get heavily overexposed.

SPOT METERING

Spot Metering only evaluates the light around your focus point and ignores everything else. It evaluates a single zone/cell and calculates exposure based on that single area, nothing else. This is a good mode to use for  bird photography, because the birds mostly occupy a small area of the frame and I need to make sure that I expose them properly, whether the background is bright or dark. Because the light is evaluated where I place my focus point, I could get an accurate exposure on the bird even when the bird is in the corner of the frame. Also, if you were taking a picture of a person with the sun behind but they occupied a small part of the frame, it is best to use the spot metering mode instead. When your subjects do not take much of the space, using Matrix or Center-weighted metering modes would most likely result in a silhouette, if the subject was back-lit. Spot metering works great for back-lit subjects like that.

Another good example of using spot metering is when photographing the Moon. Because the moon would take up a small portion of the frame and the sky is completely dark around it, it is best to use Spot metering – that way, we are only looking at the light level coming from the moon and nothing else.

Some DSLRs like the Canon 1D/1Ds are capable of multi-spot metering, which basically allows choosing multiple spots to measure light and come up with an average value for a good exposure.

Lines can be effective elements of composition, because they give structure to your photographs. Lines can unify composition by directing the viewer’s eyes and attention to the main point of the picture or lead the eyes from one part of the picture to another. They can lead the eyes to infinity, divide the picture, and create patterns. Through linear perspective, lines can lend a sense of depth to a photograph. (Linear perspective causes receding parallel lines to appear to converge in the picture. This allows you to create an illusion of depth in your pictures.)

The viewer’s eyes tend to follow lines into the picture (or out of the picture) regardless of whether they are simple linear elements such as fences, roads, and a row of phone poles, or more complex line elements, such as curves, shapes, tones, and colors. Lines that lead the eye or direct attention are referred to as leading lines. A good leading line is one that starts near the bottom corner of the scene and continues unbroken until it reaches the point of interest. It should end at this point; otherwise, attention is carried beyond the primary subject of the photograph. The apparent direction of lines can often be changed by simply changing viewpoint or camera angle.

Vertical, diagonal, horizontal, and curved lines create different moods. Vertical lines communicate a sense of strength, rigidity, power, and solidarity to the viewer. On the other hand, horizontal lines represent peace, tranquillity, and quietness. A generally accepted practice is to use a vertical format for pictures having predominantly vertical lines and horizontal format for pictures having predominantly horizontal lines. Again, this is a generally accepted practice, NOT a rule.

When shooting black and white landscapes look for ‘active skies’. The skies with breathtaking  and wonderful cloud formations will almost always translate to great black and white photography. Having skies with so much ‘action’ in them add mood and a really dynamic look and feel to images. Without this active element  images  will look rather empty and dull. I think the same principle could be applied to most types of black and white images that have large parts of them dominated by any one thing. If a large part of your image is all the same tone the image can look quite lifeless (unless of course you’re going for a more minimalist look). (photograph Golden-Gate-Before-the-Bridge by Ansel Adams)