Technical stuff and patterns

You know what I wish? I wish that I had set my camera to AUTO for a few of those sunrise shots on Hilton Head Island---just to compare a before and after. The first morning I was out there, all my pictures were black. I kept making adjustments and it just wasn't happening. Additionally, there ended up being too much cloud cover to show much of a sunrise. In the end, it was kind of comical because about an hour AFTER sunrise, and after a couple cups of coffee I realized I was "adjusting" the wrong thing! I blame it on blurry vision and jet lag??

Ok, so maybe someday I will read all these notes and see this photos and feel a little embarrassed at my lack of skill. But in keeping with my intentions for this blog to be somewhat of a learning record and journal of what captivates my attention, I wanted to write a little about what I did to get the sunrise shots.

First of all, none of them have been altered at all in Photoshop.  I know for certain that if I had a tripod with me, I could have taken some really neat, different shots. The lighting could have been lower and I was so desperately wanting to slowww down that shutter speed to show the motion of the waves and the spray in the low light. But, it just couldn't happen without my tripod. I would have also liked to get the moonlight reflection off the water. I'm pretty sure that shutter would have had to have been open for many seconds-- 20?? or so??

In order to get enough light into the picture so that it wasn't black, but also deep enough so that the colors weren't washed out, I had to use the spot meter and read light from a moderately shadowed area. I found the shadowed sea dunes and and part of the unlit sky gave me the best balance. So, I focused the spot meter on that spot, locked in on that reading, reframed the shot and took it.  I had to try that several times to find a reading that was adjusting appropriately.  In the meantime, the light is continually changing and quickly! I was getting distracted- the fire in the sky, the reflections on the sand, the play of light in the sea grass, ooohh, back to the the cloud line and rising sun!! Fun!  So, I had to keep making adjustments. I also found that as the sky was filling with light, my eyes could see those deep hues of color on the horizon but the camera wasn't picking it up- everything looked very light and washed out in my viewfinder. I quickly adjusted the the exposure compensation- trying first to bring it down about half of a stop, but in the end, I think my favorites were around -1.7.  In review/summary- exposure compensation is the camera's ability to make balanced adjustments of the 3 components necessary for proper exposure (aperture, shutter speed, and ISO-or the light meter's sensitivity to the light.) 

I'm trying to think if there were other technical things in my mind that I was responding to while shooting those pictures... and right now I can't think of anything else. I am going to try to attach a couple shots of fun patterns that I found on the beach and wanted to capture in case I wanted to use them creatively sometime in the future.

You know, there was a better pattern of sand/silt that I was sure I had on my camera. Bummer. It must have been one of those shots that I appreciated and took only with my "eyes". :)