Exposure Compensation in Mercer

Exposure compensation could be described as overriding your camera's setting for a particular image exposure. You decide to capture a longer exposure (+) or shorter (-) one. How that's done depends upon your camera model -- read your manual!

I believe this building is called the Mercer County Courthouse Annex. With the back-lit sky, this initial shot (Nikon d300, Nikkor 70-300mm AF-S VR f4.5-5.6 G lens @ 70mm, 1/200 sec @ f/7.1) was a bit dark compared to what I saw. SO, I used exposure compensation of +0.7 (1/125 sec @ f/5.6) to get the shot following -- a more accurate depiction of what I saw:

I also tried center-weighted metering to see what I would get:

Too bright -- and insufficient contrast. Exposure compensation is your friend!