Ann LT has the most amazing quote by Diane Arbus on her Profile page. It is:

"It's important to take bad pictures. It's the bad ones that have to do with what you've never done before. They can make you recognize something you hadn't seen in a way that will make you recognize it when you see it again." - Diane Arbus

I spent much of this day taking bad photos and she's right. That's how you learn. This morning I'd recalled a photo of a sunflower that I'd taken in front of the Iraqi Embassy in Washington, DC back in July 2006. I thought it might be a good start for a duality. After finding and downloading this photo off its backup CD, I could see that a possible match would be a self portrait taken in the mirror with my camera at my eye. Sounds simple, right? Wrong.

I must have taken at least 40 frames of me and my camera reflected in the mirror. Every single one was overexposed. Now, I'm sure you experienced photographers know exactly why that was, but I didn't. At least not at first. It took me the l-o-n-g-e-s-t time to figure out that my spot meter was exposing for the black hole of my camera, meaning everything around it would be overexposed. This camera--the Canon 40D--and I are relatively new to one another so I'm still getting the hang of things. My old Canon Rebel XT didn't even have spot metering, so I had no idea of its limitations. Well, thanks to my having had a bad photo day, now I do. When I finally brought out the 40D manual, I saw that evaluative metering would be my best bet. Instead of exposing for what was in the center of my lens, it would include the area around it and average out to an exposure that would work for everything. And work it did!

So my thanks go to Ann LT and Diane Arbus for giving me permission to take bad photos. It's a great way to learn.