Focus....Metering in Photography

Today, I want to give a little tip on focus and metering in photography. Now, I am not a teacher by any means, but I had fun taking these photos so I thought I would talk about them. If you have a DSLR and are still on Auto, please try going Manual or Aperture Priority(AP). If you go into your camera menu you will find an option called Metering. When you choose that you will get 3 other options. I choose "spot" for most of my picture taking. It allows you to choose what you want in focus. Which brings me to these photos....

 Do not use your screen for this, use the eyepiece. You will see several small dots. Now, push the shutter button down halfway. If you watch carefully, you will notice that one of the dots will flash. That is where your focus will be. To change the spot of focus simple press the the arrows on the back of your camera. I have a Nikon and the arrows for me are around the OK button.
Back to the photos. I used only 3 of the spots in these photos...the top....center....and bottom. In the above photo I used the top. Notice how the focus is on the background of the photo and the rest of the log is out of focus.

In this photo, I used the center dot. Notice, that the background and the foreground are out of focus while the center is in focus.

Finally, I used the bottom dot and again notice how just the foreground is in focus. If you look at all 3 of these photos, they each say something different. They paint a different picture in each photo. So, play around with the metering on your camera and see what you can come up with in your photos.