Now, there are numerous tutorials available online - and for free - that pass on tips and techniques to anybody willing to learn, to master various software programs, and I am constantly in search of new tricks to get the best possible image from a file. Some are useful; others not so. Most, if not all, is sound advice, but as software becomes ever more powerful I am left wondering if it is such a good thing for all applications. Obviously discretion of the photographer is paramount, but it can be all too easy to apply the same processing techniques to every shot I take, and this is possibly a mistake.
The photograph of Throop millpond is an example of this (above). Exposing for the highlights, this rendered the foreground of the shot as a deep black in the RAW file, but I am able to control the shadow - and the resulting digital noise - by tweaking the relevant sliders in the Basic module in Lightroom. This greatly increases the dynamic range of the photograph and retrieves shadow detail, but to my mind it seems to be bordering on the overdone HDR (High Dynamic Range) treatments you can find littering portfolios and galleries on the internet these days.
Not that this image falls totally into that trap, but I shall have to keep a more watchful eye on what methods I use, I think.
12-24mm f/4D AF-S Nikkor. 1/500 second at f/14. - 1stop EV compensation. ISO 400
© 2013
4 comments:
My God, man. What a beautiful masterpiece. You have mastered the effects of which you speak. And you get yourself to the right places at the right time.
Thank you, Tim. Always an element of luck involved, but as the photojournalist maxim goes: "f/8, and be there" always pays off.
Having taken a fresh look at the photograph I am not quite so alarmed as I was when I selected it for this post, but for a while I thought I was teetering on the brink of overblown. :-)
Marvellous work, as always.
Thank you, Anonymous, who ever you are!
Post a Comment