Let there be light.

Let there be light. Jeanie with the light brown hair. Fight for the light. Light, light, light it's all around us and what are we going to do about it?

This time of the year the South Coast comes alive with light. The forests and the shores dazzle with the many colors the sun brings to stone, sand and tree. Eat at Benneli's and watch the blue of the bay change color as the sun sets. Portside and the High Tide Cafe let the sun play on the snad banks and flats of the estuary. Shore Acres is aglow with the blooms brought out by the light, even the humble weeds and wild flowers rejoice at the coming of summer light.

So what are you doing about it?

This is where I think painters have it all over photographers, a painter can take wht light offers and use it or change it as the subject or his mood requires. A photographer has to take what the light offers him and hope like the devil he can change it in Photoshop.

What? You listened and you didn't spend six hundred dollars on the high priced spread? That's okay, we'll change it and say what GIMP or PhotoScape offers. That better?

Back if the dark and distant days when slide film was all a working guy could afford, I loved Ektachrome, I started with 64 and worked my way up to High Speed Ektachrome, even pushed it a time or two. Boy was that living, ASA 320, course it was a little grainy but you gotta make compromises, (unless you are the U.S. Congress.)

Now the digital revolution gives us camera which can take a candle and make it light a room. Course that magic means when you are shooting in bright sunlight you have to make some decisions. The sun out here is just a wee bit brighter that a candle.

An overcast day will bring back those soft blue and green tones Ektachrome gave, but that's not really dealing with the light. No to deal with it you have to be a painter or know a little bit about your camera. Even if you are a painter you need to know a bit about your camera unless you are only a Plein air guy.

Photography had its birth in France which explains why so many of the controls are screwed like crazy. The lens opening is called an F/stop. (Don't get me started on why that doesn't tell you a thing about what it actually does.) Small F/Stops like F1.2 are big openings of the iris, lots of light getting in, big F/stops like F22 are tiny iris openings, not much light getting through, so to start we have a big problem understanding. To close the iris down, make it a smaller opening, is called stopping down. Which means in true French fashion, clicking on a bigger number. Digital cameras make all of this stopping and starting much easier by doing it for you and most of the time they do it right.

But they can't always get it right. That's where you step in. The light we get here on the South Coast is so intense it takes a tiny amount to get a good exposure. Most of the time your camera will pick a smaller F/stop because smaller means bigger opening which means faster shutter speed which means less chance for you to shake the camera. It also means not so dramatic light. But you don't have to take what the camera gives you. Each and every one of these technological marvels has a button on the back which allows you to change the exposure value.

It will look something like this and it will allow you to quickly change the setting on your camera to get the best from the light.

Painters can change their minds, their view, their ideas and do it on the same canvas. Photographers have to work with the light they are given. Might want to drag out that camera manual and give it another read.