This week we learned about exposure and the balance between light and dark in photos. I chose the above photograph as my most successful because of the high contrast between lights and darks in the photo. I find it beautiful how the light is hitting a small section of leaves, highlighting the color, details and placement within the whole tree. The dark areas show what the overall structure is, but allows you to keep focus on the lit area. The lighting also allows you to see the details in the leaves, the veins, where the leaves meet the branch, the small pointed tips and the variation of the outside edge. The lighting focused on that one small area allowed me to take a high quality photograph without losing detail to a high ISO or low shutter speed. I did not use exposure compensation on this picture because I wanted to maintain the shadows on the leaves surrounding the lit leaves in the middle of composition.
