How To Shoot A Dreary Day

I have been thinking this through for days now, and I can't come up with a way to shoot the real, nasty gray, dreary, putrid light outside. To give you an idea of the light we have, the streetlights are still on at 9:30am.

So how would you shoot that to show the drpressing reality of that crap? What settings are "normal"? I assume I need to shoot in Manual mode, but when you rely on a meter to give you a correct exposure, it gives a reading that makes the frame look much brighter than it really is. Minus actually showing the streetlights, which would give the wrong impression, how would you shoot "real" light, to show the light the way it really is?

That's a correct exposure determined by the geek that programmed the meter. What does he know about the shot you want?
Here's a original raw conversion that isn't quite what I wanted:
https://photography-on-the.net …hp?p=8939874&po​stcount=29
So I did some PP & came up with this at the bottom of post #1:
UBNXOUS Beast! part #2.

If you want to illustrate the "real, nasty gray, dreary, putrid light outside.", then I suggest that you take a series of shots ranging toward the underexposure end of the scale & put together that parts of each exposure that fit the vision in your mind. See post #13 in this, & the other links in the thread.
Malibu in the snow.

Yeah, I've come to the conclusion that I will have to use live preview in Manual mode and just dial it down till it looks the same as the real world.

Won't matter, no one will believe it anyway.

Except maybe you. Where you live you probably get our weather 6 hours later.

I would shoot it Raw, expose it to the right to get all the good data I could and to minimize noise, then pull it back down and make it dreary in the Raw converter. A good Raw file will allow you to get the "feeling" you are after better than any other starting point.

I only shoot RAW anyway. I should have gotten out this morning and tested this, but I was busy with something else. Testing is the only way.

You might try emphasizing the gray day by including something bright in the image?

That's a great idea. I think something downtown with the wide angle will probably show it best.