Tyger Tyger, burning bright,
In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry
This isn’t a tyger (or a tiger for that matter); it’s not in the forest; it’s not fearful. It’s a lily and no, not even a tiger lily. But, when the sun in my entryway illuminated the petals from behind I thought it looked quite lovely and I decided to photograph the lilies. Ironically, the lilies are on a table painted to look like tiger skin. After noticing both the light and the juxtaposition of the lilies on the tiger top table, I couldn’t get the allusion to Blake’s poetry out of my brain and, feeble that it is, decided to title my post in reference to it.
I was experimenting with bracketing today. I haven’t used bracketing at all and I think I could probably benefit from using it. I guess I didn’t realize it would work in Manual mode but I’m reviewing my camera manuals and watched a KelbyOne video about the D800 and was reminded of quite a few features that I have overlooked in the two years I’ve had this camera, bracketing being one of them. Bracketing is the practice of taking several photos of the same subject using different exposures. My camera allows me to select the exposure range (in this case I chose 1/3 stop) and the number of exposures to take (I chose 3). I used the timer and each exposure was increased by the set increment. My initial settings were f/16 and 1.3 seconds shutter speed; the camera decreased the shutter speed by 1/3 stop in the successive two shots to let in more light and thus increase the exposure. I tend to like darker exposures and I decided to use the initial exposure I set instead of the bracketed shots but I can see where this feature has huge potential.
