Thanks to Xmaskatie for sending me
this lovely picture of her sunset the other night.
Oh, what some people must endure
when they live on the water.
I feel your pain, truly I do.

My herb and driftwood garden.


Perhaps this little swallowtail
came from this
little caterpillar
who was feasting on my parsley last September.

My yellow iris is blooming.

The sun was at just the right angle for this shot.
I love the yellow and green together.
Photographers:
Listen up.
Imonna give you an important lesson here.
This next picture was taken
with my little
Nikon CoolPix P5100,
which I use 99% + of my time,
since my time is spent in the kitchen,
with a camera hanging around my neck,
an apron on that I try to remember to put
my camera underneath when I'm
splashing both water and hot oil
all over myself.
My Nikon is set on Automatic most of the time,
but when I want to get the light just right on a scene,
I need to override the camera's Automatic Settings.

Look at the above picture.
The composition is mehhh.
(I cut off the bottom right plate.)
But look at the contrast.
There is none.
It's supposed to be black and white.
There is no true white in that picture.
I let the Automatic Exposure
take this picture.
There's no contrast
because your camera's exposure meter
is programmed to average out the
brightest and darkest areas in the scene.
Back in the days of film photography and SLRs,
the exposure meter on the camera
was designed to meter
on an
18% gray scale.
There is a shade of gray (18%)
- and I can pick it out immediately today -
that a photographer would meter on
(in the same light and position as his subject matter).
(Also, I can tell you exactly 68 degree water temperature
on my hand.
Anybody out there get that reference?)

Now, this picture is in the exactly same lighting
as above, but it's crisper.
That's because I overrode the
automatic exposure on the camera.
There should be an "exposure compensation" dial
on your camera.
This is how you use it:
If your camera is focused on something white
and that means it's
metering
(as in exposure meter)
on that white,
it wants to see it as
18% gray.
So you go to your exposure compensation dial
and turn it to +.
You want to overexpose.
It will have several degrees of plus increments.
Experiment.
If you are focusing/metering on something black,
go to your exposure compensation dial
and turn it to -.
You want to underexpose.
It will have several degrees of minus increments.
Experiment.
It used to be called "bracketing your exposures"
in the old days.
But we were frugal,
since film was expensive.
Now it's all digital.
Totally expendable.
One click and it's gone.
Humor me please.
Go back and review the last two photographs,
or should I say "digital images."
And compare and contrast with
each other and the next.
The next image is a digitally enhanced version
of the last.

I sharpened the edges.
I upped the contrast,
the brightness,
and the shadows.
This is the exact same picture as
the one before.
I like the digitally enhanced starkness
of this photograph.
But in terms of photography,
I don't think digital enhancement is quite sportin'.
't ain't Kosher neither.
If you can't do it on your own,
then it doesn't mean that much.
Does it?
The above shots were taken under
a totally different light condition
than this shot, below.
The above shots were taken with incandescent lighting from above.
See the reflection of the light in the above shots?
The following shot is under natural light:

When will people learn?
Natural is better.
Nothin' better than pure white light.
Back in the day of black and white photography,
what you wanted to see in your photos
was every shade of gray
on that gray scale,
which started at stark white
and ended at the blackest abyss.
And that's why I like
the photo above.
It has almost every gray
from white to black.
I've mentioned this before
if you'd like to take the time
and look at my photographs
here.
End of lesson.
Hope you learned
something about exposure.
If you even got this far.
: )
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