. . . more than 260 million years. The common horsetail is a survivor of the Carboniferous age and it is a strange and unusual plant. I walked across the street behind my house and down the bank to the little creeklet that runs along the sidewalk. Instead of the cattails that I was looking for, a thick swath of horsetails stretched in both directions along the water. I was drawn to the color and the vertical lines of the plants.
It was overcast so I set the White Balance to cloudy. I used the widest aperture. And, I was presented with another conundrum: some of the photos were overexposed and some seemed fine, although all the settings were the same. The photos I took when I faced west were appropriately exposed; those that I took when I faced north or east seemed to be slightly overexposed. I should have used a faster shutter speed so that the north and east facing exposures would have been correct. I wrongly assumed that because the sky was overcast, and it was only an hour after noon, the sun wouldn’t have an effect on direction. It obviously did. And the brightness of the sky when I faced west resulted in the slightly darker exposure which, in this instance, was correct.
The photo I chose for today was not taken facing west. I applied “Curves” in Aperture to this photo and did not decrease the exposure.
Lens at 200mm
ISO 200
f/5.6
1/100
White Balance Cloudy
Curves, cropped