Level 2 difficulty shot…

Continuing with the one shot on a walk theme for myself, I wandered down west cliff drive here in Santa Cruz before the rain this week. Always wanting to add more difficulty to a situation, I chose to not only take just one photo this time., but also take that shot with a fixed focus lens.  Rather than have the zoom capability, when using a fixed focus lens you have to sneaker zoom, or actually walk to change the composition in the frame (walk? ugh). It was getting close to five in the evening when I took this shot so I was also shooting into the sun… My goal was to get a shot with the lighthouse mostly silhouetted drawing the viewers focus to the clouds behind.  I shot this at ISO 400, f5.6 @ 6400 using a fixed focus 50mm lens. I could have gotten the lighthouse darker if I had used a lower ISO…which was my intent. I was so focused on the shutter speed and aperture that I didn’t notice the ISO was so high. Its a decent shot and IF I had a second chance I would have taken it at ISO100. Once I clicked the release and saw the image on the LCD I knew what I had done wrong. This is the whole reason for this sort of exercise right? To get you not only thinking about the composition elements but also the technical elements of the shots you take. I’m really enjoying this and I think anyone who’s serious about photography try it as well.