Bracketing, My Way

Gary Hart Photography: Tumble, Marion Falls, Milford Road, New Zealand

Tumble, Marion Falls, Milford Road, New Zealand
Sony a7R V
Sony 24-105 f/4 G
ISO 800
f/14
1/10 second

Bracketing then and now

Remember the uneasy days of film, when we never knew whether we had exposed a scene properly until the film returned from the lab? So as insurance, we’d bracket our exposures, starting with the exposure we believed to be right, then hedge our bets by capturing the same composition at lighter and darker exposure values. Today, digital capture gives us much greater dynamic range, as well as instant exposure confirmation (histogram), rendering this kind of exposure bracketing mostly unnecessary.

Another kind of bracketing, that has become quite popular in our (relatively) new digital world, is clicking multiple frames to process into a single image that uses only the best part of each. While I’m irrationally opposed to any kind of multi-image composites in my own photography (not that there’s anything wrong with it), popular applications in the general photography community uses this form of bracketing to solve exposure, depth of field, and star trails problems, to name a few.

Given that I’m a histogram evangelist, using a camera system with arguably best dynamic range possible, combined with my personal aversion to composites, it might be easy to conclude that I never bracket. Quite the contrary, in fact: I bracket the heck out my images.

For example

In this year’s New Zealand workshop, for the first time ever, not only did Don Smith and I get to take our group to Milford Sound, we had a full day to savor not just the sound itself, but all the delights of the Milford Sound road as well. In prior workshops, we’ve always spent two nights in Te Anau, which allows us to spend a full day cruising Doubtful Sound. Departing Te Anau the following morning. we’ve always headed up the Milford Sound road only far as Mirror Lakes for our sunrise shoot, before doubling back past Te Anau and straight to Wanaka. Then we’re off to Fox Glacier the next day. But this year, a rock slide forced us to drop our two days at Fox Glacier, so we pivoted back to Te Anau for two more nights. This gave as a day for Milford Sound, which turned out so successful, we decided to make it a permanent part of the workshop.

From Te Anau, the drive all the way to Milford Sound (the end of the road) is less than 2 hours—without stops. But with stops, we had no problem turning this route into a full day’s journey. Among the many waterfalls, lakes, and snow-capped peaks we enjoyed that day, the highlight for me was our short but sweet hike up to Marion Falls.

The fact that Marion Falls is really more a series of violent cascades than it is a vertical waterfall doesn’t make it any less beautiful or dramatic than your conventional, Yosemite-style plunging waterfall. (New Zealand has plenty of those too.) Immediately after crossing the stream on a swinging bridge, you find yourself on a lush trail. The verdant surroundings, filled with the roar of still unseen rushing water, gives you a pretty good inkling that something beautiful is in store.

This was the first time Don and I had taken a group to Marion Falls, but I was there with my wife last July. On that visit we were with a group completely devoid of photography priorities, so it had been a relatively quick stop just to stretch our legs and get our eyes on the falls. Period. On this visit, I was excited not only to have more time, but also by the heavy overcast that provided shadowless light that was ideal for flowing water.

As soon as I saw a gap in the foliage with a view of the entire “fall,” I scrambled through the opening and down onto a flat (-ish) rock directly above the torrent. I wanted my composition to emphasize the rich green framing the stream: ferns on my side, mossy boulders on the opposite side. But with that goal in mind, I had to balance my desire to get out as far as possible for the most unobstructed view of the stream, with the knowledge that any slip, stumble, or broken foothold would most likely require a recovery, not a rescue, some unknown (an not insignificant) distance downstream.

To unburden myself of my heavy and awkward camera bag, I set it down in the bushes just off the trail, grabbing only my tripod, camera, and 24-105 lens. Camera and lens mounted, I metered before attempting a composition, grateful for the flat, unchanging light the allowed me to expose once and then forget about it. Next, I carefully planted my tripod a little farther out than I was comfortable planting myself—as far out as I could get it while still being able reach my camera’s controls—and used its articulating LCD to compose (because I couldn’t get my eye to the viewfinder).

Once I had my exposure and composition set, I was ready to start bracketing. For me, bracketing can take many forms: sometimes it’s a varying framing of the same scene; sometimes it’s a variety of depths of field for a range of background softness options (not for focus stacking); sometimes it’s different motion effects; and sometimes it’s a combination of some or all of the above. In this case, I simply wanted to vary my shutter speed to alter the motion blur in the water.

Since my shutter speed would determine the amount of blur, and my aperture needed to be small to ensure front-to-back sharpness, I adjusted my ISO, with a corresponding shutter speed adjustment to keep the light the same. In other words, when I wanted a faster shutter speed, I increased my ISO, and decreased it for a slower shutter speed. The result was a range of motion effects with exactly the same amount of light..

With water moving this fast, even a 1/8 second shutter change creates a noticeable difference in the motion blur. For this composition, I ended up with a dozen or so frames with varying amounts of motion blur, finally (with the help of the 38-inch monitor in the comfort of my office) choosing this one that used 1/10 second (one the faster shutter speeds). I chose 1/10 second because it provided enough blur to convey the water’s speed, while still retaining the character and detail of each feature. I found that shutter speeds faster than 1/10 started showing an unappealing scratchiness in the water, while going much longer than 1/10 second started smoothing some of the best water into a detail-less, frothy white. Because this water was flowing so fast, I saw very little difference between shutter speeds of 1 second or longer.

This kind of bracketing isn’t really a revolutionary approach to photography—many photographers use it in one form or another. But in my photo workshop image review sessions, I often find myself surprised by the number of photographers who leave potentially great shots on the table because they simply click a pretty scene once, then move on. Whether it’s depth of field, framing, motion, or any of a number of other possible scene variables, don’t forget that there is almost always more than one way to capture the scene. All you need to do is slow down, and challenge yourself to find it.

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