Understanding Histograms

What is a histogram?
A histogram is a tool that graphs the tonal range of an image.
What happens to the visual when a histogram is skewed to the left? Right?
When a histogram is skewed to the left, it might be overexposed. There are a lot of light tones in the image. When a histogram is skewed to the right, the image contains a lot of dark tones.
In most cases, what does a "good" histogram look like?
In most cases, one should strive for a balanced histogram with peaks in the middle.

Why is a histogram a good tool for photographers?
Histograms help show whether an image is over or under exposed and creating effect the photographer wants.

Photo Comp Assignment 1

Comp Assignment 2

The element of design that I chose for this shooting assignment was texture.

The photos were hard to balance with the light that I had when I was shooting for this assignment. I ended up with a lot of shaky pictures. Once I had culled the good from the bad, I had a few decent pictures that really flourished with some editing. I found editing these picture to be a lot of fun. I especially liked to play around with the colors. This was made easier when the image contained a wide range of lights and darks. I would recommend when doing this assignment, even with an element/principle of design like texture, to remember while shooting that the picture should lead the viewer's eye to the other pictures in the composition and include another element that does that.