I think we've all done it, taken an absolute banger shot only to realize that the photo was underexposed or overexposed, meaning it was too dark or too bright. Well, you probably ignored your histogram, or perhaps you don't know what it is. So let me explain exactly what the histogram is and how it's going to help you save your follows. So first let's understand exactly what the histogram is, but before we even do that, ensure that you're shooting in RAW. It contains the most data and won't fall apart when it comes to editing. Now you may have had let it some stage as you felt it got in the way, so check your settings and activate it again. It might be under the info button. This powerful tool is going to help you expose your images regardless of the conditions. And this beauty is the histogram. Your friend in photography who you should check in with regularly to get their opinion. The graph is essentially a visual representation of the pixels on your sensor in the scene that you're shooting. It shows the brightness of your image starting at the left, at pure black, and on the right at pure white. The taller the bar, the more pixels are contained in that area. Now when you're in the field and if you're taking some photos and you're going to all of a sudden your histogram, that these are all leaning to the left, meaning that your image is under exposed. If they're leaning to the right, it will tell you that the image is overexposed. Now if you go too far in either direction, it means that the sensor cannot capture any data in those areas. And if it's too dark, all it's captured is black, and if it's too bright, all it's captured is white. Any data in these areas is completely lost. And regardless of what editing program you use, you won't be able to recover that data because there is none there. All it's recorded is pure black in the darks, and pure white in the brights. Thankfully you can see this when you're shooting, so don't allow any of those bars to touch either the left or the right hand side of your histogram. Now it's important to avoid these areas. On this of course, you want to shoot some dark and moody images, or you want to shoot some bright and airy images. So let's look at an under exposed image. All of the bars are leaning over to the left hand side. In fact, some are touching the edge. That means that there's pure black, and there's nothing in that to recover. Now let's look at a bright image, and all the bars are leaning to the right. In fact, some have touched the edge. That means all the sensors captured is pure white, so your highlights are blown. There is nothing you can do to pull that back. So what you want to be aiming for is a perfectly exposed image, not all the way to the left, not all the way to the right. Effectively, a mountain in the center of the histogram. No matter what your style of photography, your histogram is going to be there to help you nail your photos. Every time aiming to get this right when out in the field is the best approach, because there's nothing worse than wrestling with an image when it gets back to editing, and you can't go back because the moment has gone. If it's too dark, it's gone, if it's too white, too bright, it's also gone. So I hope you enjoyed this quick explanation of this extremely powerful tool. If you have, why not consider subscribing, and if you want to watch more content, you can watch this video here, and until the next time, Shlongafol.