The Register

The branches in this picture were remarkably black. If I had let the camera make the exposure decision, the grass and bushes would have been placed as middle gray and the branches would become inky slashes, obscured by a lack of contrast.

Instead, I made their blackness the center of the exposure. Which required a much longer exposure time to pull detail out of their dark arms. When I did that, everything else lightened correspondingly. The leaves went from middle gray to light gray and white in some instances. The branches, several magnitudes darker, stayed dark, but offered up a little detail for your eye to explore.

Whatever you set your normal to, the rest of the register moves in relation to it.

Imagine you decide to wake up every morning at 4AM, and pull it off daily. Everyone around you thinks you’re crazy. They scoff and squint. Why? They ask. We wake at 7. But from where you sit, getting three hours of quiet work done while they sleep, they’re the ones who look a little silly.

You do have to go to bed three hours earlier though. The balance sheet of your life must accommodate it.

I expose for the branches. I go to bed early. Everything else finds its place.