Metering Practice

If you go to Aimee's site It's Overflowing you will see that the next lesson is on Metering.  Okay.  Now this is really scary because it involves looking at that little graphy like thingy and (Phantom of the Opera music here) putting your camera on MANUAL.  Aaaargh.  I have never done this before.  Not even with my P/S camera that I love.
She gives us great exercises for practicing and throughout the lesson she has been giving good guidelines regarding settings.  Her husband, Stud, is a professional photographer, so she passes on the settings that he normally uses.  This helps so much.  We don't have to reinvent the wheel here.
Now, with metering, you do need to sort of remember how the other exposure pieces work.  But, not to worry.  You can look them up again like I did.  She gives a great practice set for you to do that really helps understand how all of this is interconnected.  I tell you, I am nearly at my light bulb moment here.  I can sense someone by the switch!
Below is my attempt at all manual photography.  This is all that remains of my Lagomarcino's candy.  I will discreetly omit the size of the box here.  All are set at 1/30, f/1.8, ISO 200 and taken with a 50 mm lens.  They were edited in Picnik by cropping and adding text only.  It was a really sunny day here and I kept having to manipulate where I was, the shades in the room, all sorts of things.  I think that means I might be getting this.  Let's hope so.  Enjoy.  And if you haven't visited her site, It's Overflowing what are you waiting for?

Stud usually snaps pics when the meter indicates
 a couple of hash marks below the middle.
This was taken with the mark directly in the middle.

This was taken one hash mark above the middle.
A little too exposed as you can see.

This was taken one hash mark
below center.  Much better.

This was taken with the meter two hash marks below center.
This one is a tad dark, I think.

Practice makes perfect, so I will post some practice shots, done manually, of my latest creation.  I did have to switch to my telephoto lens as I wanted some close ups for artistic purposes.  Toodles.