Overexposure and underexposure
White chair: Deliberate use of overexposure for aesthetic purposes.
A photograph may be described as overexposed when it has a loss of highlight detail, that is, when important bright parts of an image are "washed out" or effectively all white, known as "blown out highlights" or "clipped whites".[9] A photograph may be described as underexposed when it has a loss of shadow detail, that is, when important dark areas are "muddy" or indistinguishable from black,[10] known as "blocked up shadows" (or sometimes "crushed shadows," "crushed blacks," or "clipped blacks," especially in video).[11][12][13] As the image to the right shows, these terms are technical ones rather than artistic judgments; an overexposed or underexposed image may be "correct", in that it provides the effect that the photographer intended. Intentionally over- or under- exposing (relative to a standard or the camera's automatic exposure) is casually referred to as "shooting to the right" or "shooting to the left", respectively, as these shift the histogram of the image to the right or left. Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposure_%28photography%29#Overexposure_and_underexposure
