Oh the bright light!

 After the pause caused by Covid, the Medio Ano Festival returned to Bigastro yesterday 

Instead of starting at the far end of town, the procession this year started at the Plaza Constitución. The turnout was brilliant and the inventiveness of the participants was unbelievable.

You could argue that the weather was perfect for the occasion. It was after all warm and sunny not dull and drizzly as predicted days ago. 

However, strong, bright sunlight poses a real problem for photographers. If the subjects are looking into it, they squint, if they turn away they are in deep shadow. Light cloud cover is what we hope for. 

One solution to the problem on a bright day is to use fill in flash to bring light into the shadow areas. You can tell from his pictures that the local professional uses fill in flash most of the time for his outdoor work. Obviously, this only works when you are relatively close to the subject,

In the days of film, dynamic range was a real issue. You could not record strong highlights and deep shadows on film. The usual advice was to expose for the highlights and let the shadows take care of themselves. 

Digital sensors are different. The best are capable of recording detail in both shadows and highlights. You just have to work a little magic in a program like Lightroom to bring them out. Even still, it is a challenge if you have a lot of photos to process. 

My friend Fonta has published his excellent photos from the event and you can see the struggle he and I had in some of our photos to bring the highlights under control and at the same time show detail in the shadows. Que sera, sera!