Grass seeds catching the last rays of sun, Silang, Philippines

Silang, Philippines. I tried all kinds of exposures: with

flash/without flash, automatic setting/manual setting,

increasing/decreasing aperture, increasing/decreasing shutter speed.

This result was the best, but it still doesn't capture how striking

the glowing grass seed stalks were against the patch of shaded lawn.

Any tips from more experienced photographers on how this could have

been improved at the moment of capture (not in post-processing) would

be greatly appreciated. I feel that I saw a great opportunity here

and bungled it for lack of specialized knowledge.

No, I don't think it was anything you did or didn't do.  You simply experienced the difference between the way the camera sees a scene and the way the human eye sees the same scene.  We can see that kind of light / dark contrast with our eyes in a way that the camera is unable to do.  The only way to makes the camera's output similar to what we saw is in processing, especially by increasing the contrast.  Processing is not a nasty word; done correctly, it simply makes up for some of the deficiencies or weaknesses of the camera.  [Of course, some people take it much further than that, but that's not what I'm talking about.]

I re-read your biography (I remember reading it before), and I can better understand your introduction to this photograph.  I feel much as you do about processing; I want my photographs to be based primarily on what I saw, not on what I wish I had seen or what I had imagined.  But I've come to realize that processing has an important role in photography, a role that, if not abused, can lead to a more natural rendition of what you saw with your eyes.  

You can look in the direction of the sun and often see a beautiful landscape.  You can't do that with a single click of a camera.  This is the best example I know of that illustrates the difference between the human eye and a camera.  I've seen photographers who have used HDR in situations like this, and it's hard to tell that they did any processing because their photographs simply looks so natural -- just as the eye would see the scenes.  Without HDR or other processing, the photographs would be extremely limited and not anything like the eye would have seen.

Point taken, Stephen. What I wonder, though, is how a photographer remembers exactly what a scene looked like when they made the exposure. I can imagine that as one plays around with processing, the mind and the eye are drawn to more and more fantastical representations of what was supposed to be a reflection of reality without even intending to exaggerate. But I agree that a shot taken toward the sun would have no resemblance whatsoever to what the eye saw, so I guess I must concede that some processing is necessary sometimes. I also worry, however, that better and better processing skills could lead one to become lazy at the moment of capture, since reality can be altered afterward so easily. I'd kind of like to maximize my skill behind the lens before I turn to processing to make up the difference.

Adam, you make a good point.  One of the greatest difficulties I have is trying to remember exactly what I saw when processing some photos.  This is especially true when I adjust the white balance or do other subtle global shifts.  I usually end up trying to get something that I think looks good and that looks natural, because it's just not possible for me to remember these kinds of subtleties. 

I think I'm probably more concerned about this now with digital than I was with film.  I used to use Velvia a lot, and it tended to saturate colors well beyond what my eyes saw.  I knew this, everyone else knew this, yet that was one of the reasons why Velvia was so popular.  Now that we have more control over aspects of the final image, we seem to be more concerned about our responsibilities (at least in the minds of some photographers) to be honest and to get it right.  I think that's a good thing.  However, I'm tending to give more latitude to myself and to others when trying to incorporate aesthetics into the final image, simply because photography has so many variables that prevent an image from accurately representing what human eyes see (e.g., focal length distorts, aperture distorts, shutter speed distorts, and sensors/film distort).