outdoorswithcamera

or dark, rich, moody?

I admit it— I love my “underexposed” images. I succumb to what one of my generous mentors calls “the religion of low light.”

Why? The colors are so darned rich!

The downside? They are “noisy”! (Noise is to digital images as “grainy” was to film images.)

Here are two of my favorites.

Am I shameless? In this regard, yes, I guess so! The sunset shot was taken out of our car’s window as my wife drove north on I-17 from Phoenix home to Flagstaff. That’s another no-no, right? The sunset image has more noise (Check it out if possible.) The bumblebee image is RELATIVELY noise-free, but in the process of fixing the noise, the problem my wife (my partner in all things aesthetic!) and I call “melting.”

But oh well. Please enjoy them, and forget my self-criticism if that works for you. If not, what can you learn? Shooting in low light is super challenging. If you are compelled to do so, take a bunch of different exposures, and try to let more light into the camera. (But if I had done that, the sunset shot would have been a blur.)