World Square + Zen and the Art of Manual Exposure

[Viz]

I have been trying to force myself into 'stripping back' and using manual exposures. I have found that shooting in mono helps this, because I ignore colour exposure and can evaluate metering easily. I think I will continue with this until I feel I have mastered manual shooting somewhat. I am trying to hark back to the K1000.

So I am posting this image from friday night, on the way to dinner, because I was happy with the result. It was shot with my Sigma 14 2.8 on 40D.

Please let me know what you think, or if you can offer any advice for treading a more manual path.



Cheers
Dan

[Pehpsi]

Great perspective, sharp and the mono suits very well..

The thing in frame (bottom right) is a little distracting I think, well for me anyways, but an easy fix

Cheers.

[AndyL]

Interesting image, however that which has really peaked my interest is this:

I have been trying to force myself into 'stripping back' and using manual exposures. I have found that shooting in mono helps this, because I ignore colour exposure and can evaluate metering easily. I think I will continue with this until I feel I have mastered manual shooting somewhat. I am trying to hark back to the K1000.

I am curious about your metering technique.

Cheers

[Viz]

To be honest, I figure it always overexposes shadows, so I put the active camera point area over shadows and send it in a minus direction by increasing the shutter speed. I have been trying to embrace the idea of letting bits blow out if the image is overall how I want it. I am unhappy with current trends to capture all available data and compress it into the capture. I am trying to achieve a natural tonal relationship from the start. That said, I am admittedly guilty of HDR experimentation and forced recovery of blown out areas. I used to retouch real estate photos, so these processes got a bit ingrained. Now I seek to re-discover simplicity.