Time to get going again

I've been so busy I had almost forgotten about this blog. I have had a great Summer and Fall with weddings and some incredible engagement sessions. I did not have time for my annual Fall Foliage expedition but did do some local shooting of Fall images. In June I started working for Living Resources and this Fall I have been assisting with teaching a photography class for adults with developmental disabilities. It has been great fun to work with such talented people.

Thanks to Aimee and Jeff for the great images from their

engagement session. The lighting was magical at this spot in the woods with all the leaves on the ground.

I thought in this post I would talk about how to get better exposures with your digital camera.

I am now 4 years into the digital revolution and have not shot a role of film since. There are a few things film still does better than digital, but the differences are so small for my type of photography that the benefits for digital far outweigh those differences. I have found that the biggest difference was the way digital captures the exposure. I found it to be very similar to shooting slide film. With Slide film you had to be quite exact in your exposure to get a good print. With film you could be off by several f-stops and the lab could usually still give you a decent print. Digital requires you to be fairly precise with your exposures. The beauty of digital is that the camera tells you instantly if you nailed the exposure or if you need to make an adjustment. It's called a Histograph. If you have never used this feature on your digital camera, it is worth the effort to break out your manual and read up on how to use this great tool.

The histograph maps out for you in a graph all the different colors in your image and how much exposure was recorded for each. The graph looks like a mountain range inside a rectangular box. The mountain peaks to the left side have recorded the darker colors and as you move to the right it shows the colors as they get lighter with pure white being the peak at the far right. The most helpful info is on the far left and right. If the peaks are climbing the sides of the box then you have under or over exposed your image. You would need to make an adjustment to your shutter speed or f-stop to obtain the correct exposure. With film we hoped we had the camera set correctly and relied on the lab to fix our mistakes. With digital it is harder to fix mistakes after image capture. But, with the histograph you know you made a mistake and can fix and re-shoot the image in most cases.

The wedding party image was taken on the State Capital steps. Dan and Lauren loved it so much they had a 16x20 canvas made from it. It is one of my favorites from this summer.

Thanks to Keri and Brian for the image to the right from their

engagement session. I had a lot of fun shooting this session.We must have walked several miles to find just the right spots.