On my way every week to visit my parents I drive up to Portsmouth, NH and inland to where the Piscataqua River meets the Atlantic Ocean. A large inland body of salt water has been created there called the Great Bay, which is tidal. One can view salt marshes as well as great expanses of water dotted with islands and boats of every size.
The bright summer day that I shot these images presented an exposure challenge. How does one strike the right balance between fluffy white clouds in a very blue sky and the shadows of the foliage? I have always heard: Expose for the highlights and let the shadows fall where they may. That is good advice but some work in PhotoShop is always required.
That day I really experimented with locking the exposure on one part of the scene and recomposing the image before shooting. I had much more control over exposure. I have also learned to lessen the brightness of my LCD and to use my histogram as I'm checking my images.
When I first started using my digital SLR I used the auto mode exclusively. The auto mode is very limiting but it took several classes to learn how to use the aperture preferred and shutter preferred modes. My goal is to become proficient enough to use the manual mode often!
I'm happy with the two landscape images above. The image of the shells was fun to play around with in PhotoShop and I used the posterize filter to add depth and contrast.
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