Here's why you ALWAYS underexpose your landscape photography...

A couple months ago, I posted a short video recommending that you underexpose your landscape photography, and I was met with a surprising amount of disagreement. In this video, I wanted to further display why I'll always underexpose at least a stop (according to my camera's meter).

This technique is known as exposing for the highlights or exposing to the right (ETTR). For most landscape photographers shooting around sunset or sunrise, this usually results in an image that is -1.3 or -1.7 stops underexposed according to the meter.

This is the best way to expose your landscape photography because it is far easier to get back shadow detail than it is to recover blown-out highlights. In fact, blown-out highlights can't be recovered, and trying to reduce the brightness will result in pure white areas on your image. Bringing up the shadows is far easier, especially with today's powerful noise-reduction techniques.

I hope that makes sense and helps you properly expose your images!