Metering

My next step to tackle in my photo taking is metering. My family took a day trip down to Tombstone and there was a colorful man standing on the sidewalk playing the bones. It was interesting and I wanted a picture. This time I did not intentionally under expose (which I have a tendency to do), and shot about ten photo's of this eccentric man. When I got home I was excited to see what I got and in every one of them, the man was too dark, the background was bright. I had to do a lot of photo shopping to bring him out as the subject and not the blurry building behind him.

So, what metering mode should I have used? Evaluative is the most common and widely used and works in most situations, however, my background was bright and my foreground was dark . . .  so now I need to choose which would have been the best option; Center Weighted or Spot.

Center Weighted - Evaluates the light in the middle of the frame. It does not look at your focus point but at the center of the image.

Spot Metering - Evaluates light around your focus point.

I will use Center Weighted next time. I wanted my forground to be the focus but the camera was reading everything and tried to expose correctly but failed. Well, I failed, not the camera. 

I wish I had payed attention to these facts when I was pointing the camera at this man. I exposed this picture better than the rest but it is fixed in photo shop.