Original digital capture out of the camera, underexposed by 2+ stops.
I sold a photo for the second time recently, which prompts me to make a few comments about the potential life that lurks under some very seemingly dead digital captures. One day while driving the Dalton Highway in northern Alaska, I saw a bow hunter just a few yards off the road waiting for a group of caribou quickly heading his way. I stopped as fast as I could, opened my sun roof, jumped up while grabbing a camera and clicked the shutter–and that’s all that I had time to do. I did not even look at my exposure settings. Since I shoot in manual by default, my previous settings did not fit this scene too well, and the frames were terribly underexposed. I was going to throw them away but after playing around a little bit in lightroom, and given the nature of the picture (this was not going to be a fine-art wall print), I decided to keep it. It was shot with Canon’s 1D Mark III, but at an ISO of only 100, so it could handle a pretty good degree of exposure boost (in this case +2.35!) It is a little grainy, but not very discernible in print. If you happen to get Alaska magazine, check out page 68 in the Dec/Jan issue. It just goes to show you that one should judge a photo on its distinct merits before throwing it away.
Bow hunter shoots bull caribou on Alaska's arctic coastal plains. Exposure adjusted in Lightroom by +2.35 stops! Canon 1D Mark III, 70-200mm f/2.8L, 1/320 sec @ f/5.6, ISO 100.
