Look at the Histogram!

Here's a secret.  Yesterday's photo of this tree in the fog was way underexposed because I was careless with my exposures.  When you take a photograph in the dark and then look at the image in the dark outside at night, the photograph looks brighter because it is dark out.  When you bring the camera into the lighted house, then you realize it was too dark.  So I was able to get something out of those photographs but that wasn't the photograph I wanted.  Wonder of wonders, last night it was foggy again and, knowing my previous exposures, I tried again.  There is a little graph you can select on the screen on the back of the camera and it tells you where the tones of the photograph are, and that's how you know if your exposure is proper.  My friend Stan says you ALWAYS need to look at the histogram.  Uhhhh...  Sometimes I don't follow his orders, and look what that got me.  I was lucky that the weather was such that I could have a "do-over!"

Here is a second photograph I did in the backyard in the fog the first night I was photographing.  I like this on a lot, even though it is more subtle.  I think there is more a sense of the fog in this one.