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Instructions
Read the histogram from left to right. There are 256 levels of brightness in an 8-bit digital picture. Absolute black is the starting point at "O" and absolute white is the ending point at "255." The middle point is "128," and that is the 18 percent gray level at which light meters measure. The left side of the middle point measures the amount of dark areas in your picture, and the right side of the middle point measures the amount of light areas in your picture.
Observing a histogram where the majority of the peeks are on the left side of the histogram means that your picture has a lot of dark areas in it. This could mean the picture is under exposed. It could also mean you are shooting a night scene and have correctly exposed the picture to capture the dark sky.
Observing a histogram where all the peeks are on the right side of the histogram indicates your picture has a larger amount of bright areas. This could be an indication of over exposure, or correct exposure if you are shooting a winter scene where there is lots of snow.
Take a few shots of the same scene, and purposely under and over expose the scene. With practice, you will soon be able to look at a scene and have a good idea what a correctly-exposed picture should look like on the histogram. A scene that has both dark and bright spots will have sharp peaks at the left and right side of the histogram. A picture of a foggy day, will have the majority of peaks in middle of the histogram.