extreme ways

Extreme shooting takes place when you're taking pictures on outdoors on a sunny day or where there is an overcast sky where there is an uneven flow of light, thus, your camera's metering becomes unreliable in balancing the highlights and the shadows it sees in the frame. With these existing conditions, your camera's metering and white balance will have some difficulty compensating for the colors and if you're shooting portraits, you may either get a tanned skin or a washed out portion of the skin due to the presence of highlights.
If you are using a Nikon camera with matrix metering capabilities, these extreme shooting conditions will be much easier to handle. In my case, I optimize the image by using either the Normal, Softer or Portrait preset setting in the Optimize Image Menu. Avoid using the Vivid or More Vivid setting for the reason that these settings will oversaturate the skin tone which is not good for a portrait under these extreme shooting condition.

As mentioned in one Nikon handbook, "Nikon's 3D Matrix Metering employs methods of exposure calculation that automatically apply exposure compensation, depending upon scene brightness and contrast and distance information. As a result, your subject, whether it is centred in the viewfinder or not, is given corrected exposure in most lighting situations." Canon calls this metering algorithm as "Evaluative Metering" but if you'll make a research on who came up first with this innovation, you'll find out it will be Nikon.

Nikon's Matrix metering, introduced as "Automatic Multi-Pattern" (AMP) metering in the FA camera in 1983, was the world's first meter that actually measured exposure, instead of just light. It is one of the most important advances in photographic technology. This meter knows how to make white snow or sand look white, instead of a conventional light meter's making everything look medium 18% gray. It applies the zone system automatically to attempt to render a correct exposure under difficult and contrasty situations. When shooting in a hurry under rapidly changing conditions, which is the whole point of using a small format camera like a Nikon, there is no better way to meter your exposures. excerpts from Nikon Matrix Meter by Ken Rockwell, 19 August 2001

With the later Nikon DSLRs, Color Matrix Metering is now a standard feature and this is perhaps why Nikon images have a better color rendition. Based from what I've read, this metering function allows yellow as light as it should be while it captures red as dark as should be.

I particularly like these photos to show how extreme shooting can be fun. The last six photos uploaded were taken under extreme conditions and no ordinary photographer would dare taking these images if they are not equipped with technical knowledge on how to choose the proper settings on their camera. The streaks of light lend some sort of niceties on these images.

Special thanks to my favorite model, Pearl Cedro, for this photoshoot. The first four photos were taken by a Nikon D200 fitted with a Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G AF-S ED-IF VR lens while the last three photos were taken using the same camera fitted with a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D lens. You will notice that my favorite Nikkor 50mm f/1.4D takes sharper images compared to the Nikkor 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6G AF-S ED-IF VR lens but the latter's bokeh is very much desirable.