Page 9 - agra2017

Taj Mahal is a tricky subject to photograph. It’s

white and made of marble and hence it reflects a lot

of light. The surrounding garden is green. Therfore
the subject has extreme contrast. In all likely hood

the cameras exposure meter is going to get it wrong.

To get the exposure right, I use this method. I al-

ways shoot in RAW. I expose for the highlights and

compensate by -1 stop thus reducing the chances

of blowing the highlights. I also make necessary
corrections in Camera RAW. Rememer while shoot-

ing the Taj Mahal it is advisable to under expose as

shadow areas can be recovered in post processing

where as highlights cannot.

One of the minarets was under repair as can be seen

in the left two images below. I worked on it in Photo-
shop and got the image as on the left. At times you

will have to cheat a bit to get the images right.

Move around and shoot from as many directions and

angles as possible. It is preferable to use a wide an-

gle zoom so that you can get complete scene in your
frame and yet retain the flexibilty of going tight where

required. I used a 12 - 40 mm zoom on an Olympus

OMD EM5 body to take the images as seen in this
Photo Book.

Do include the foreground and people in your

images to make it more interesting.