June 7, 2009

Yesterday's photo came out of the camera very nicely. I messed with it a little, but it was genuinely a good photo with nice exposure. Comparatively, I went to a park less than a mile away and took a photo within five minutes of the photo in yesterday's post and the clouds were completely blown. What went wrong?---a litany of things. The main thing is that, with the first shot, I used my histogram. My interpretation of the histogram can lead me to overexpose sometimes, but more often than not, I get a better exposure with the histogram. When I moved locations, I wasn't thinking. I didn't use the histogram. I just snapped. If I would have thought about it, I would have known the bridge and shadows were going to be a problem for the auto metering. When I looked at the photo, I could tell the clouds were blown, but I didn't have time to figure the shot out. It turned out to be salvageable, but I'm most gratified when I take a good shot, not when I create one. I blended exposures creating different exposures with my raw settings. This usually works out better for me than taking different photos with different exposures. Can you tell along the tree line? I'll answer that, yes, you can tell along the tree line. It isn't the most natural transition in the world. I guess I could do better if I would have taken more time, but, as it is, this photo has probably taken up half my life not to mention the longest post in history :) Would I ultimately get a better product if I took different photos with different exposures rather than working with the same photo?