The Dog Playing in the Snow

[puffer_archer]

I was shooting my dog Ginger playing in the snow the other day and when I was reviewing my photos I found this picture. In terms of Ginger I think it turned out pretty well, however my question about it is this, does the snow in the upper right corner being blown out ruin it? If so, what could I do differently next time to prevent it?



Cameral Canon 40D
Shutter 1/1000
Aperture 6.3
ISO 400
Exp Comp 2/3
Focal Length 70.0 mm
Flash Off

[lputman]

The snow doesn't appear blown in the upper right to me at all. I think the exposure on the dog can be selectively increased a bit. Very nice shot though.

[Anders]

What a lovely dog
And it's a very nice picture. The blown out snow is not ruining the picture at all. It's not a problem because there is no important detail we should see there, and it's not getting attention from our eye, because our eye goes to the place of biggest contrast, which is the color contrast between the white snow, and the saturated brown dog.
But as iputman pointed out, increasing the exposure on the dog, would be nice.
Hope it helps,
Anders

[Raoul Isidro]

Nice mood shot of the dog. He looked, umm, angry?
Snow shots are tricky, and this one came out good!

[Jim Poor]

First, the snow in the upper right isn't blown out at all. Not even close actually. I measured and the highest reading I found was 242 in one channel. On average, that area is in the low 230's so there is plenty of detail left.

That said, I wouldn't try to bring up any detail in that area as it is unimportant. Even if that corner were completely blown out, it has little effect on the image aside from the positive effect of NOT drawing attention away from the subject.

Looking at the exif data, I see that you have an exposure bias of -.67 and matrix metering which is exactly wrong for snow. The camera's exposure meter wants to make things neutral gray, thus underexposing the whole scene, including the snow which makes it look dull and gray instead of nice fluffy white. The key to snow photography as a bit of over exposure while still retaining some detail, though there isn't a lot of important detail in a blanket of snow anyway.

If this were my photo, I would bring up the overall exposure a little and bring up the dog quite a bit.