In my last post I reflected on 2009 and told you about some of my goals for 2010. One of those goals is a challenge for myself to understand light and exposure more by intentionally shooting a subject each week–in manual mode.

Ahh, the elusive M on my camera dial. I’m diving in head first, and today I took some shots of our cat Quincy. I’m quite sure you’ll see many more photos of him, as well as our dog, as they are always cute and always willing! So today I took 23 photos of Quincy, which I narrowed down to about 5 and chose two of my favorites to show you. Both shots were slightly underexposed, so I have the before and after here. My goal is to get to a point where I don’t have to play with the exposure in editing, but here’s what I’ve got for now!

The exposure was f/2.8 and 1/640, ISO 400, window light at around 3:30 PM in the winter. I bumped the exposure up a little over 1/2 stop.

This exposure was originally f/2.0 and 1/50, ISO 400, inside about 6-8 feet from window light, around 3:30 PM on a winter afternoon. I also bumped this exposure up a little over 1/2 stop.

That’s all for now! Stop back again soon for some of my Christmas vacation shots!