While processing images form a recent kayaking photo shoot I was amazed at the difference using the Fill Light slider made to my images. I was shooting images of expert kayakers on the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico and the canyon for this stretch of the river is so deep that you have to shoot at non-ideal times. For this shoot we starting shooting at 9 AM just as the sun crested over the east canyon wall. Even so there were still really harsh shadows on the kayakers - especially their shaded faces.

To counteract the dark shadows I used the Fill Light slider in the Develop Module. The fill light slider affects the mid-tone shadows in of the histogram - not the deep dark shadows but just about every other dark section of an image.

As you can see in the images at right, the kayakers face and half of his upper torso were in dark shadow and to my eye it looks as if I shot this image on Fuji Velvia. I'd prefer a lot more detail and open shadows in the kayakers face so I moved the Fill Light slider from zero to 33 and the result is the bottom version of this image. You'll notice that the fill light slider has radically opened up the shadows in his face and torso so that the image looks much more like the original scene according to my eyes.

In my opinion, without the addition of some fill light (via the fill light slider) this image and many others from the shoot would have ended up being deleted. This first sample isn't that nice of an image. In fact it didn't even rate two stars in my final edit and wasn't processed (until it got recruited for this blog post) but it works quite well to show just how powerful the Fill Light slider works.

At right is a much nicer before and after image from this shoot that did make the cut. The Fill Light slider was used effectively but the effect is more subtle in this case.

In this image it was mostly the kayaker's face that was in deep shadows. I wanted to bring out some detail so that the viewer can connect with the athlete a little more. I used a Fill Light amount of 9 to bring out a little extra detail and open up the shadows.

Now, in my experience you have to be careful with the Fill Light to some degree as it is easy to overdo. If you add too much then the shadows will start to get muddled. And also noise will be exacerbated when you add fill light. Hence if you shot that image at 3200 ISO and are trying to boost the shadows you might not like the effect (unless you are shooting with a Nikon D3 which has ridiculously low noise levels).

Interestingly enough, adding fill light to an image also helps it print a little nicer - especially when converted to CMYK or if printing on matte papers.

That's it for this session. See you next week.

Adios, Michael