Here comes the sun

And I say it's alright.

Gotta give a shout out to Sandy, who kindly steered the readers of her two blogs here yesterday. Thanks, all, for the kind words about my pictures. Glad you like.

I'm finishing off the series of foggy woods photos with this one taken at the Burnidge Forest Preserve in Kane County, Illinois, not too long after the shots posted yesterday and the day before. By then, the sun was quickly burning off the fog and making its presence known. Just a few minutes after taking this image, the magic had disappeared.

Fog presents an interesting challenge to a digital camera. The automatic focus mechanism struggles to latch onto something solid and the auto exposure can be fooled into making the fog too light and/or everything else too dark.

Tip: Use your camera's spot metering function (I don't use anything else) and place it on an object that you are featuring in your photo -- in the case of the last two photos, I used the trunk of the foreground tree and grass/reeds in the middle ground -- then push your shutter button halfway to lock the exposure, recompose, then click. Check to be sure you haven't blown out any large areas -- if your camera has a highlights feature for the LCD, which causes pure white areas in an image to flash, use it; it's a life saver. Make exposure adjustments if needed and try again. For the record, I metered on the area midway between the sunburst and the ground in the photo above.

By the way, do you have a song stuck in your head now? If not, maybe this will do the trick:

Light rain

Water flows like liquid light at the base of Suter Falls in the South Cumberland Recreation Area in Tennessee, high on the Cumberland Plateau. The 1000-foot-tall escarpment rises a few miles west of Chattanooga and extends midway across the state, traversing it from north to south and stretching into Alabama and Kentucky.

Numerous rivers and streams cut into the tableland of sandstone and shale, producing hundreds of waterfalls, caves and sinkholes.



Suter Falls is categorized as a 30- to 50-foot tall waterfall, depending on the water flow over the caprock. Heavier flow pushes the falls out farther and deeper, which is what is was doing when I visited in early spring. The flow eases in the hot summer months and the falls can be nonexistant by early autumn.

For some tips on how to get the most out of shots of moving water, take a look at an article I wrote for Digicamhelp, a web site devoted to beginning-to-intermediate photographers. I'm a contributing writer to the site, which is filled with tons of helpful advice for aspiring shutterbugs. Check it out.

That summer place

It’s not too early to be thinking summery thoughts. Check out the Summer Group on Squidoo, where you can find ideas for traveling, recipes, parties, all things swimming and beachy -- you name it. Find and share ideas in a virtual garden party.

Heidrun, the Summer Group lensmaster from Germany, is a longtime follower of Points of Light.