Women at the Food Truck – Austin, Texas

I’ve taken enough pictures and practiced enough serious photography that I don’t make too many exposure errors. Especially since digital mirrorless cameras show you the exposure live on screen. However, I still do make mistakes. And, I’m not too shy to talk about them on the blog.

This street photograph looks decently exposed, and I just happen to time the woman looking back over her shoulder. However, in my zeal to capture the decisive moment, I made a big error. Somehow, my ISO setting got knocked way off, and I didn’t notice. I made this picture at ISO 160 instead of ISO 3200. Underexposed by over 4 stops.

I expected this to be a throwaway picture. However, on a lark, I post-processed this in Capture One. What I recovered floored me.

Women at the Food Truck – Austin, Texas (Original)

This is the original RAW as shot. There ain’t much there. I knew the Fujifilm GFX 50R was capable of good dynamic range, but what resulted was totally unexpected.

Women at the Food Truck – Austin, Texas (My Pick)

Black and Whites tend to hide more imperfections, so I wanted to show the color version up top. However, my pick is this monochrome, which I generally like better for street photography — perhaps out of tradition or because of the more contrasty artistic look. Either way, I was fortunate enough — and stunned really — that I was able to recover from my mistake. Though properly exposing is absolutely the preferred method.

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