Sometimes it pays to clean . . .

Chris built some shelves over my craft counter the other day (the man is incredible) and so I did some tidying and cleaning, which mainly consists of moving stacks of stuff from Point A to Point B, and often entails putting things into jars so I can see what I've got (which is, basically, crap in jars, but it's cool crap).

The seven clock faces that I bid on and won on eBay don't fit into jars, however, and so are sort of stacked up on a shelf. I was moving that stack o' clock faces from Point A to Point B when I had the urge to stop cleaning and begin photographing. Funny how that happens.

For this shot I put the clock face on the counter and used a 100mm macro lens hovering over it to capture just the Roman numeral 12 on the face. My lighting was a fluorescent overhead garage light -- not ideal, but it sufficed for this sort of thing.

Tip: When your camera is placed so that bright light can enter through the viewfinder, cover up the viewfinder (the eyepiece). Why? Because bright light coming in through the back of your camera fools your camera's meter and your photo will be underexposed. Don't believe me? Try it. Set up your camera on a tripod. Point it at something. Meter the scene. Click the shutter. Do it again, only this time shine a flashlight in through your camera's eyepiece on the back of the camera and click the shutter. See what happens? Who knew?

Older cameras had little "curtains" that, with a click of a tiny button, would cover up the eyepiece, preventing light from entering via the back of the camera. Now camera manufacturers supply you with a completely impractical little piece of rubber that's attached to your camera strap that you can slide over the eyepiece. Have you tried using that thing? Sheesh. I just hold my hand up now to cover the eyepiece during the exposure, making sure, of course, that my hand doesn't touch the camera and jiggle it.

My point is that because my lighting came from overhead and my camera was on a tripod pointing down onto the clock face, I had to hold my hand over the eyepiece to prevent the shot from being underexposed.

So here's my shot of Roman numeral 12 on the clock. I've got 11 more numbers if you want to see them! :-) ©Carol Leigh