A light fandango

Flower Friday 15: A whiter shade of pale

"And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just ghostly,
 Turned a whiter shade of pale"

Procul Harum - A Whiter Shade of Pale

Along with a few others I am having a go at Emma Davies's "A Year With My Camera" course, and this week's exercise involves trying to get an understanding of how the camera deals with exposure.  As part of that exercise we are trying to take shots of white cats in a snowfield and black cats in coal cellars.

I had thought that I understood this stuff reasonably well, but I would freely admit that it had never occurred to me to try to work out what it was that the camera was doing with its automatic exposure adjustment and why I might occasionally have to override it.  

I have taken about 50 shots of this particular scene this evening in an attempt to get just one that has the "right" exposure.  Normally I shoot RAW and happily rely on my post production to deal with this stuff.  I've now realised that I rely an awful lot on what I have learned to do in post production ....

Anyway, here is one that I freely admit I have slightly touched up (I've sharpened it slightly).  However the exposure is as set manually on the camera.