Best viewed in Original size.

This scene provided an opportunity to consider several issues. There is a freshly painted white shed,
partially in bright sunlight. The main subject tree is an 'evergreen' Live Oak with dark leaves. The tree
behind and seen above the Oak is a tree with light green, newly emerging leaves. And the subject
Oak has deeply shaded, dark trunk and branches. And, finally, I am shooting from dark shade, with
patches of sunlight, and a dark branch in the composition.

Using a 1 degree spotmeter, I chose the bright shed to set my upper limit at white with no detail, and
used the shadows on the shed, and the sunlit middle distance grass, as 18% Grey .This brought the
foreground in at zones III and IV, and the Oak Trunk at Zone I or 0 (no detail). I exposed the Fuji Acros
at 80asa, and developed it in Ilford DD-X 1:4 for 10 min. at 20c, with agitation every minute for 15 sec.


As the white shed and 'field horizon' are at the visual center line, perhaps a more suitable composition would
remove the bottom third of the image and tighten the left edge by cropping one tenth of the width. However,
I am not averse to this full image, and breaking the 'rules' (whose rules anyway?) can be very satisfying!

Given the harsh contrast, I am relatively happy with the collection of detail here in this image. This is an
unretouched, non-photoshopped, Epson V750 scan of the full negative.