Adam Monk Photo Tours & Images Gallery

It’s amazing how time flies, I’ve just looked back and realised my last post was March last year… yet I have 4 posts in draft that are basically ready to go. Clearly I need a manager, or a PA… If only I could get someone to pay for that…

Back on topic, I put up the details for next year’s (2027) Japan Winter wonders tour, sent the details to a small group who had expressly asked to be notified early and now its fully booked… Sorry if you were waiting for that but missed out. I would love to welcome you for the next tour in 2028.

If you would like to know details as soon as they are at hand, email me at tours@dammonk.com and I can put you on the early notification list

I shot all my early images on large format film, with a hand held light meter, so I can tell you there are a few big things that make digital cameras such a huge leap from film. Such as…

• Instant feedback – you can see it the moment you shoot it.
• Much broader dynamic range – digital captures the extremes so much better.
• The Histogram… Why? Keep reading…

Relying on your light meter…

…Continuing on from this Previous Post

One of the main difficulties you will encounter when shooting into the light is that your light meter will almost certainly produce a dud result.  Your camera’s light meter assumes a subject of mid tone grey, so to balance the tones with the intense bright light coming straight into the lens it will show your subjects as black silhouettes, usually with no detail information in the shadows.

Your image will usually turn out very dark…

I still remember reading the exposure guide pictograms on the Kodachrome 64 box when I was young.  It showed in wonderfully simple graphics how you should always shoot portraits with the sun over your left or right shoulder so that the bright sunlight shines directly onto your subject, and never with the sun in front of you shining into your camera lens…  This gave us many generations of family photos of people with screwed up faces as they squinted directly into the bright sun.

Into the Light for Drama

Regardless of what the old Kodak film box says, shooting into the light can produce some stunning results if you are careful with your exposure and practise a little.  

It’s not going to be right for every subject, but there are many situations when an image shot into the light can add enormous drama to a scene, especially if you can create strong shapes and take advantage of the shadows produced.

The image to the right was taken at the Mongar Tshechu, a cultural festival in the far East of Bhutan, shooting into the light, deliberately.

Look at the shadow stretching out in front of the dancer, see how it’s adding so much to the narrative and the dynamic nature of the image?

You could even say that the subject of this image is the dancers shadow rather than the dancer himself.

This shadow also gives a real 3D depth to the image, something that can be difficult to achieve with a 2D medium like photography.

Travelling is back, bigger and better than ever. Well, the bills are bigger… better is all relative. Relative to not being able to travel at all it’s definitely better. Something nobody wants to think about when planning a big adventure is Travel Insurance… its expensive, and unless something actually goes wrong you never really know what you are getting.