Changing Light

The Alpha Chi Omega fraternity just celebrated the beginning of its 85th year on the University of Missouri campus. The front façade of the chapter house, which faces westward on Richmond Avenue, is surrounded by plants that model the chapter’s official colors: red and green.







In my changing light assignment I photographed the outside of the Alpha Chi Omega fraternity house. I picked this place because it incorporated a variety of textures and colors, and I like the pretty window box; it was also a convenient location to shoot. While the subject matter may have been slightly dull, I learned more about metering and exposure in different lighting circumstances.

While it is embarrassing to admit, I had never before looked at the histogram information on my camera. It was an eye-opening experience to use it during this assignment. I played around a lot with both my aperture and shutter speed, trying to even out that histogram for each shot. The most troublesome time I had shooting was at midday. Shot cl_petel_HR_03 was the best from that time frame. Because the sun was almost directly over me at 12:50 pm, I had a large shaded area on the left side of my frame and a very bright area on the right side of the frame. The difference between the two areas was greater than 2 stops. I averaged the meter readings for the bright area and the shaded area to find an exposure in the middle ground that slightly favored the shaded area since it took up a majority of the frame. However, my shot still does not look quite right. Midtones rule this picture; when I was shooting I did not know how to expose for the shaded area without completely blowing out the tree and the sunny area in the frame.

I took my favorite shot, cl_petel_HR_01, during the “magic hour” right after sunrise. I like the warmth in the windows and the detail and color in the elephant ear leaves. This shot was easier to expose for than others since the light was diffuse and illuminated most of the shot with the same intensity.
I am working a lot on trying to understand exposure better. This assignment surely helped me move away from relying on the camera’s automatic meter. I need to work on calculating what kind of exposure will work, but I think this assignment provided a good start.