Blown out light areas. How do I keep it from happening?

[petra]

I'm new to this so I hope someone can give me a simple explanation (like the For Dummies books verison). I keep having the same problem and have yet to figure out what to do. If you'll take a look at the "beach" on the left hand side of the attached picture, you see that it is fairly washed out. I have yet to figure out how to expose so that I get detail in the beach without the rest of the picture being dark. I know it can probably be done in photoshop (I only have elments 2.0) but I was wondering if there was a way to do it without post processing?

Mark

p.s. I had to reduce the size of the file quite a bit to upload it and it seems the colors and clarity have suffered quite a bit. Sorry.

[CaptainTom]

YOu could bracket exposures - shoot what you meter says, then shoot a stop less, then 2 stops less, etc. eventually you will get the beach exposed properly, but of course the surrounding area will be underexposed.
In post processing there are a dozen ways to do what you want.

[Casper]

You probably could point your camera at the beach and half press the shutter (and hold), to meter the exposure for the beach, then recompose for the shot you want and finish pressing the shutter.

Your photo will be underexposed, but you should be able to fix that as Tom said. You could start with levels in Elements 2.

P.S.
That river scene looks great, with today's humidity I'm ready for a swim.

[DEMDeepEllumMusic]

This comes down to burn and dodge techniques in the dark room when shooting film, no matter what you do in camera will keep the exposure correct for the vast majority of the scene and not blow out that beach. Now a polarizing filter may have helped some to tone down the beach but you basically have to go in and tone down the beach in post processing or hope a cloud shades the beach.

[petra]

Thanks for the suggestions. I've tried to do the burn and dodge thing, but apparently I'm not very good with it. Doing it in Photoshop isn't as easy as the old days in the darkroom. But I'll keep trying.

Does anyone have a good, simple reference for Photoshop Elements? I find the book that came with it confusing sometimes. I've never gotten the red-eye tool to work properly and now the cropping tool is acting kind of weird. Tried reinstalling the program but that didn't fix it.

Any suggestions would be appreciated. Like I've said, this is all new to me. I've been out of photography for quite some time and everything has changed. Trying to catch up with the rest of y'all.

Mark

[dlee]

You didn't say what camera you're using, but if has an info button and displays photo with a histogram like Canon's do, look for flashing area(s) [over-exposure] in the photo and then adjust exposure and re-take the picture to eliminate the flashing areas. Of course this is a real-time, on-site solution while in the field.

[johnastovall]

This may not help in Elements but in PSCS2 I'm findingthat doing two raws images one for high light detail and one for shadow detail and then merging them in layers with a black mask and brushing out the blown highlight to show the layer below is a life saver. Having a tablet is also very helpfull for detailed brushing much better than the mouse.