The Histogram

Hello my shutterbugs! Hope everyone is doing well and have great plans for this weekend!.
 I want to take a few moments to discuss Histograms. A very useful tool. Most digital cameras have it. Look for it.

WHAT IS A HISTOGRAM?  HOW DO YOU READ IT?  HOW TO APPLY IT?

How man times have you looked at the LCD on the back of your camera, seeing with your eyes what seems to be a good exposed photograph, only to view it on your screen and see that it was darker than you wanted , or that you lost massive amounts of details? Did you say many? Well It was the same for me when I started photography. Then I kept asking and studying and found a tool that is to this day so valuable to me that I always use it!

 

A histogram is the reading located on the back of your LCD. Most cameras have the option to view the photograph and the histogram at the same time. Look to your camera’s manual to find out how to display it on the LCD . I highly recommend that you do this. This will help you with exposures. It indicates brightness using a graph to measure shadow and light.

Left side represents dark and the right side represents light. The horizontal access reading left to right is what is indicative of reading exposure. The vertical readings are the brigthness of each pixel in the photograph.

If your reading is all the way to the left the darker the exposure. If its all the way to the right the brighter the exposure. I found a good article by following LightStalking on twitter who offer articles with their newsletters.

http://www.lightstalking.com/histogram

As much as I hate to say this, but today is a really busy day for me now that I got the husband back to work, highly medicated for his sinus problems. I can concentrate on starting to clean up my website and actually grab my camera for some much needed therapy. <chuckles> I try to photograph something everyday and try a new techniques, but we all know that can be hard to do with so many things that need to be done in a day! I wanted to give you some readiing that will help you with exposures and encourage you to keep learning.
  On another note: I have a model that has agreed to take on one of my projects, knowing this could take months to complete!
Thank you to Lynette! What a trooper!
 My locations to do a modeling portrait sessions will include, of course the studio, sloss furnaces,The Alabama Theatre (if i can get the paperwork approved) and downtown locations in Birmingham. All times are currently tentative. I am offering the opportunity for anyone in my area to come along for the ride! If you want to bring your cameras and learn, please email me and let me know, which session you want to attend. I can only take so many before the prices change, out of my pocket! I am paying for the use of sloss with other locations to get us in for the day, so let me know now if you are interested so a date can be set up! I will of course do another post dedicated to this project.
 Have a great weekend everyone and I will see you all on Monday!