Those who follow this blog or who have come to our workshops know that Arnie and I don’t think much of a “perfect” bell curve or histogram. We encourage our participants to photograph for effect, as we do ourselves. When the histogram is weighted to the left (dark) or right (light), there is no bell curve as we know it.

So, for those of you who don’t know what I mean, a so-called “perfect” bell curve lies in the center of your histogram and pretty much mimics the outline of your average bell … dinner bell, Liberty Bell, school bell. Is this a good shape for your histogram (all the smaller screen captures here are histograms)? Some people think so. Others, like Arnie and me, do not.

The painting above is a well-known one by Rembrandt called Aristotle with Bust of Homer. Note how its histogram is weighted to the left. Many people call this “Rembrandt light.” You know, where the edges are dark, drawing your eye away from the edge to the main subject that is lighter.

We were in Bryce Canyon last fall, and some of our participants witnessed an instructor from another workshop sending his students back over and over again until they came up with the perfect bell curve.

Our group was appalled. So were we. I can only imagine what the man from Bryce would think of Rembrandt’s bell curve above. Perhaps he’d send the painter back over and over again until he got it right.

Let’s pretend that Rembrandt did go back. This might have been his painting along with its much-tidier bell-curve histogram.

With the above, do you think anyone would remember who Rembrandt was today? I can’t speak for others, but I, for one, wouldn’t have given him a second glance. Yuck!

I can hear Arnie and me critiquing …

“You know, Remb, while you do have a very nice sense of composition, it gets lost in the fact that everything pretty much has the same tonality. I don’t feel any emotion here. Where did you want your viewers’ eyes to go? It’s not clear. You really need to study light and the effect it has in your image.”

All kidding aside, there are certainly places where it is appropriate for the histogram to not crowd the left or right edge. Photographers doing catalog or scientific work, where faithful renditions are critical, must pay careful attention to the color and tonality of an image; they generally need to stay away from those untamed histograms that spike near the edges.

But many people photograph for effect. Our workshop participants often ask if we check our histograms.

Arnie says, “Yes;” I say, “No.” Sounds like a song, doesn’t it?

That doesn’t mean that Arnie is unduly influenced by what he sees, nor does it mean that I am not aware of the lights and darks. In both cases, we know what we want out of our photographs, and we have been at this long enough to know the results of our settings. After all, we shot film for many decades. Transparencies, even, where you didn’t get a second chance. Many of you did, too.

Let’s look at a few examples where clipping definitely occurs, along with the attendant histograms. No bell curves here. The blue represents a lack of detail in the shadows/darks; the red indicates the lack of detail in the highlights/lights. I saw this in the scenes, and frankly, that was what attracted me to them.

Try to imagine, as with Rembrandt’s painting above, what the photographs would look like with a “perfect” bell curve. [shudder]

Many of you know one of my favorite photos from Savannah that has garnered many positive comments. It was done in one of the famous cemeteries, and I wanted “the light at the end of the tunnel” that is so often described by people with near-death experiences. If there had been a lot of detail at the end, the image would not have had the same effect or message.
Note the very narrow spike on the right edge of the histogram.

It was late, late afternoon when we were coming up the river in southern Belize and found these cayuks. To me, it was a classic case of gorgeous, Rembrandt light. There’s no doubt that I would have failed that gentleman’s course in Bryce Canyon.

In the next example, a young woman sets up her loom. There is little light in the building. I loved the way the light caressed the side of her face. Do I care that the darks are really dark? You know the answer; it’s what I love about the image.

Sometimes, Arnie and I shoot high key. High key is term in art to describe an image whose values (lights to darks) are all or almost all at the light end of the spectrum. We were down in the Lowcountry of South Carolina, and while everyone was making dark, saturated, sunset images, I went the other way and shot high key. Look at how many of the highlights are blown out. Again, do I care? Yes, because it’s exactly the effect I wanted, including the flare that I chose not to remove with Content Aware Fill in CS5.

Each person has a different aesthetic, but whatever yours is at any given time, photograph for effect, and while the histogram may be helpful, don’t get too hung up on it as the do-all/end-all (exceptions noted) if you really know what you want.

For more information on our workshops, go to Barefoot Contessa Photo Adventures.

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