Day 162—Half A Barrel

When I stopped at Raley’s on the way home from the gym this morning, their huge display of wine barrel halves stopped me in my tracks. When I realized that wooden wine barrels would satisfy the daily challenge theme, “starts with ‘W'” I knew I had to photograph them. The sun shines harshly on the east facing wall of this store in the morning but I didn’t want to come back later when the display would be in perfect indirect light so I took out my camera and started shooting. I had to make lots of adjustments. I set my ISO to the lowest ISO available in my camera, 50. I wanted a shallow depth of field so I opened the lens to its largest aperture and watched the meter to adjust the shutter speed. The white balance was set to sunny which returned the perfect color. It was only after I got home and downloaded the photos that I realized I still had exposure compensation set at +2 from yesterday when I was experimenting with Aperture Priority. It has no effect when the camera is set to Manual mode but it is still so annoying to me that I do not remember to check my settings before I shoot.

I focused on the bung hole (half a bung hole) in this shot. This is my favorite of the several I took this morning.