December 23, 2008

Old Petroleum Jelly on the Lens Trick

Yesterday’s post reminded me of a photograph that I took in the spring and had never shown.  On the way back from Savannah, Georgia where I attended the Next Step Workshop (cannot say enough about this workshop—it will make you go to the next step with your photography), Janice and I stopped at Callaway Gardens.  The place is really beautiful.

I took a photograph of this bridge and the flowers behind it one evening, but as I looked at the image on my laptop, I was not really happy with it.   The shots lacked focus.  I tried a few quick and dirties in Photoshop, but was not really happy with the results.  I finally decided that I needed to make parts of it more out-of-focus, and since Janice will not let me buy a tilt-shift lens (something about having food on the table and roof over our heads—don’t really understand these things), I decided to use the old petroleum jelly trick.  I smeared a little petroleum jelly on my filter.  I made several shots, adjusting the spread and amount of the petroleum jelly on each shot.  This is the one that seemed best to me.

Camera settings:   Nikon D3, 70-200mm f/2.8 at 135mm, shot at ISO 200, f/9.5 and 1/180 of a second on a tripod with petroleum jelly smeared on parts of my UV filter

Post Processing:  Lightroom—set white and black point, and added mid-tone contrast, increased saturation of red, orange and green and changed hue (slightly) of green, added vignette, and cropped image more into a panorama view.

PS—if you use this trick, be prepared to spend a little time cleaning the filter on which you spread the petroleum jelly.

13 comments:

  1. I like the effect. I think I will just use Photoshop to get it. Sorry.
    Ted

    ReplyDelete
  2. Rich colors and excellent composition. The line of the pond brings your eyes directly to the bridge.
    The Professor

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