Hey guys,

Been busy as hell with university work and all.

Have lots to put up, just haven't had the time to sit and work on them and put them up.

Glad to say that my development and printing skills are getting better, I just need to work on my communication and compositional skills and learn how to shoot faster.

Doing a project on the bikers of the UAE, so if anyone has any contacts, please let me know, I'd be grateful.

Been reading a great book lately called "The Practical Zone System" that tells you how to get properly contrasted images with good exposure.

Thought I'd share this with you folks, as this works with both film and digital, be it colour or black and white.

EXPOSE FOR YOUR SHADOWS!!

When you are shooting a picture, always expose for your shadows.

See, the camera light metre is set to what is known as 18% gray. As in, if you put a white card in front of the camera (filling the view finder), and you choose the settings that the camera tells you to, the white card will LOOK 18% GRAY. This is known as middle gray, or Zone IV.

The zone system was developed by Ansel Adams, and works by saying pitch black is Zone O, and white is Zone IX. All the other shades fall in zones in between.

Zone III is known as the important shadow detail zone. When you exposing for a shot, check which part of the image you want to be Zone III, or which part you want to be dark, yet has details showing. When you choose that, take a light reading, and step it down by ONE STEP.

When the light metre measured that area, it gave you the settings to get that part of the shot at Zone IV. Since the zone system is laid out the same way the aperture and shutter speeds on a camera are, all you have to do is underexpose the frame by one step, and that area is set to Zone III.

Now, as for DEVELOPING the image, that is different. I will talk about that later, and doing it in digital still applies.

If any of this is not clear, just go online and try to get a grasp on the Zone System. After that, everything else falls into place, and its pretty simple.

Cheers.