When taking a picture the camera has a light meter that will try to get the correct exposure. Exposure is made up of 3 parts: the film speed (ISO), the aperture (f-number), and the shutter speed (fraction of a second). When your camera uses it’s light meter, it tries to make the scene be an average grey called “18% grey’. To take advantage of this photographers will use a grey card to take the exposure reading.
Photographers will also ‘bracket’ their shots. That is take a shot with 1-stop more and 1-stop less light. Each full stop is a multiple of 2. So 1-stop less is half the light and 1-stop more is twice as much light for the exposure.
Sunglasses on boy LED lighting
For the little boy series of images. the -1 exposure looks the most pleasing. This is probably due to the dark coach taking up a large portion of the image.
Students in a classroom – Fluorescent lighting
This best shot in this series is likely the +2 bracket, for two reasons. First, the exposure is better, the image is bright and has nice contrast. The other reason, the expression of the fellow in the foreground seems to tell a story or mischief and intrigue.
One lesson learned in taking this, is to not rely totally on the camera choosing the best settings for exposure.
