Sunday, 21 August 2011

What did I do?

I went to a flea market today, and had a lovely time despite, or perhaps because of, the occasional drizzle. It rained quite hard at one point, but that coincided with the time we decided it was time for lunch, so that was perfect. Otherwise the temperatures were perfectly bearable. There was the occasional bit of misty rain, but although it was very humid it was MUCH nicer than the heat we've had recently. In fact it is unusually cool for August.

I haven't been taking many photos in the past couple of years and was never very good, really, at knowing how to use my lovely camera, and today I accidentally hit a button that caused this:


The problem was that I had no idea which button I'd hit, or how to change it back. WHY DID EVERYTHING GO BLUE? And WHY WOULD ANYONE WANT EVERYTHING TO GO BLUE? Why is it so easy for this to happen? Is it an effect people often want?

I took a few more photos and was distressed to see that that it wasn't a one-off thing. All the photos were turning out blue, and I didn't know how to change it back. Was I doomed to take blue photos for the rest of the day? I fiddled. I hit buttons. I didn't understand the menus (or even how to use them) because I hadn't used the camera for so long. I've used it recently a little, but only in auto mode. (Must read the manual again.)

Nothing worked.

Finally I had a clever (i.e. simple) idea and turned off the camera. Then I turned it on again, just in time to take this (in auto mode):


Thank goodness turning off the camera worked! I would have hated to miss this shot. It would have been even better from the front, but I was busy fiddling with the camera when they were coming towards me, and this shot from the rear is good enough. I particularly like the way the head priest (I'm assuming he's the head priest, since he has a minion to carry his umbrella and the others are all getting rained on) has a halo. Yes, I know it's someone's hat, but it looks to me like a halo that slipped slightly.

I like to think it slipped slightly because he'd just had a slightly naughty thought.


2 comments:

kenju said...

I like your sense of humor! It does look like a halo.

The blue of the first shot is rather interesting, but I'm glad you found out how to get rid of it.

tinyhands said...

My guess is that you hit the 'white balance' adjustment. It can be useful when in any of the manual modes for correcting the difference between incandescent, fluorescent, halogen, sunlight, cloudy, etc.