Experimenting with interpretation is one of the most enjoyable aspects of photography today. I must confess that I don't always know at the time of capture how I want the image to appear in the final state. Brookgreen Gardens stood out to me as a place of structure. The complex entanglement of the Oak trees, the beautiful sculpture work on display, and the lines and form of leaves and plants. This plant has a very green color to the leaves, but I found that too distracting from the original motivation for the image and that was the structure and lines. I didn't really envision a black and white presentation so I played around with some of the Light Room default color schemes. The one that represented my original vision most clearly was the "aged" scheme. The leaves really seem to respond to this color presentation. I apologize for not having comparison images, but I also believe they may be more distracting than educational. My main point is to experiment with all of the tools we have available today. Knowing what tools are available can only make one more proficient in the field knowing how to apply those tools to the interpretation at the moment of capture. I will continue to share with you more images from Brookgreen over the coming weeks. Take care.
landscapes
Oak Tree-Revisiting the image
While I enjoyed the "unreal" presentation of the original "Oak Tree Canopy", there were two items that continually gnawed at me. One was that the midtones were just too MIDTONED! So I applied another curve to the image to raise the mid and upper tones a bit on the scale. The second bother was that the image looked too "squatty." It simply looked compressed. So I elongated the image with the transform tool in PS and I like the aspect ratio much better now. Since I make no bones about manipulating images, this image is certainly no attempt at representing "reality." I will address the reality of photography off and on in this blog, but as you may have guessed, the camera is certainly not a truth-teller. I hope you enjoy the discussion of the revisit and have a great day.
Oak Tree Canopy - An Unreal Vision
In the field I try my best to just respond to interesting light that catches my eye. Sometimes it may be the brilliant color that is being revealed while at other times it may be textures and the play of the light on the subject. In this particular case, I believe it was both, but my first interpretation led to a black and white presentation and minimizing the impact of "color" in the image.
Technically, this is a bit different in that it is a vertical panorama of two images taken with the 90mm tilt/shift lens on the Canon 5D MarkII. The tilt/shift permits me to simply shift the lens from top to bottom to increase the field of view and minimize field distortions as a result of changing the angle of the camera. This was also my first real outing with the 5DMKII and I must say it performed very well.
I do encourage you to click on the image to see a larger presentation. Viewing the image on a full screen, it certainly strikes me as something "unreal", but yet this interpretation does exactly what I want it to do in presenting the texture of the complex canopy of branches and hanging moss with the dappled light of mid-morning. To contrast this presentation, I hope to soon be posting a color interpretation so that we can perhaps compare the "real" and "unreal" interpretations afforded by the same image.
I do love the old oaks of the south with their hanging moss scattering light amongst their branches. To me the oaks really shine with the sun providing a mostly backlit situation, which can be technically challenging from a dynamic range standpoint. There are other images still "stewing" in the Light Room "pot" so please check back for more presentations and interpretations and a discussion of the approaches to each individual image.
Hello Again!
Hello to all and I hope you have had a wonderful winter and spring. I just wanted to touch base with you and let you know that I am producing new work and will be presenting work in many different formats. For instance, you can now join me on Facebook to see what's new. Now Facebook will include a mix of personal and business, but it is a great place to interact and a great way to stay in touch. Please join me on Facebook today.
P.S. I hope to begin sharing with you new ideas and resources on producing multimedia content featuring HD video. Please stay tuned and drop me a note.
Bryce Canyon
There are images and compositions that bug you until you finally decide to develop them for presentation. This image is one of those that has haunted me for the past year. It is also representative of where my photographic style is going. I will have more on my next photographic project, but for now, this is one of my favorite images from a hike within Bryce Canyon taken last November. I hope you enjoy it.