hello all!

So for the last few months I have been trying to figure out why people tell me my photos look dark, especially when they look (in my humble opinion) "kick-ass-sexy" on my computer. I figured it had everything to do with people's monitors being too low on the brightness at first. But after a lot of testing, calibrating, retesting, looking at my work on dozens of other monitors...etc. I figured that the only think i can do is change my monitors' brightness to match what i see on others and test it out. In order to do this, I had to but the brightness down to zero, and the gamma down to -50. Its not close to what i see on others. So what in the world makes my monitor so much brighter than others??

Please, i could really use some input on this. Comment, let me know what you think. Will be posting/updating my shots from Utah for this little experiment, so I could use all the feedback you can give me.

Thank you!!!
Joseph