The Great Over Exposure of 2011

After 2 weeks of school for Eliza (really 7 full days), I was ready to have some one-on-one time with her, and a break from the "new" super clingy Audrey.  So Daddy took Audrey to the grocery store with him, and Eliza and I headed to La Jolla to check out some tide pools and explore some new areas of the beach.  It was beautiful and sunny, so I was excited about the pictures I took - as I've said before, I often have trouble with lighting.  Well, I was so happy to be spending time with Eliza and taking pictures, that I totally didn't notice the settings on the camera being changed.  I don't know if it got bumped in my bag, or if some little hands were messing with it, but it was set on Manual.  I rarely change the setting from Scene and Kids - mostly because I don't know what I'm doing - so this was not good to say the least.  I uploaded the pictures onto my laptop, and was horrified!  Disappointed doesn't even cut it - there were actually tears.  Most of the pictures looked like this....

Aaahhh!!!! 

So I went through all 128 of them one by one, and tried to salvage a small handful.  If you haven't heard that under exposing is always better, now you know.  It is fixable with photo editing.  Over exposing is impossible.  I have Windows Live, and using only the edits on my laptop, I tried to play down the highlights of the exposure, and play up the saturation of the colors.

We started down on the beach.  She stood near the side of a cliff with the waves crashing in just left of the rock.

close up.

Then we climbed back up to the walkway and headed south, past the Museum of Contemporary Art and into Coast Blvd Park.  There was a walkway before the park, along this huge stone wall, that made a perfect backdrop - or would have.

We climbed down a well-used path to some rocks and tide pools.

Eliza had fun stomping around in her rain boots and watching crabs, fish, and anemones.

Even though, this one is super white, I love how she stands out in the starkness of it.

Guess I won't snap a photo soon without double and triple checking the settings.  Hope you can see from some of these, how great they could have been.