January 26, 2009

Looking for Details

Friday, I took a portrait of a lady and her three dogs.  The session started at her house in the Museum District of Houston.  The dogs were just not cooperating and she was most apologetic.  She told me that she normally takes them for a walk about that time over in Herman Park, which is a few blocks from her house.  I suggested that we move the session over to the park.  After a little running around, the dogs settled down to their normal activity at the park—her and the dogs setting on a bench watching people walk by while she read her book.  I got some really good photographs of them.  They seems so natural and “looked right.”

After the session ended, I wondered over to the Japanese Garden.  The lighting was not too good, so I decided to zero-in on some details.  I found this graffiti on the trunk of a tree.  I found it interesting for some reason.  I wanted the photograph to show the depth of the three trees and the lighting that was falling on them.

Camera settings:  Nikon D3, 70-200 f/2.8 at 180mm, shot at ISO 200, f/5.6 and 1/125 of a second on a tripod.

Post Processing: 

Lightroom—Change the white balance to a warmer color, set white and black points.

Photoshop—Created mask that had closest tree being white, middle tree being 50% grey and back tree and background being black and used the mask to saturate colors a little and add sharpening using the high pass filter method with a hard light blending mode and created a border in onOne FotoFrame.

3 comments:

  1. Nice photograph. You were successful getting the idea of depth into the photograph. But I do not like the border. It takes my view away from the trees.
    Debbie

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  2. I like the shot but the frame doesn't add anything for me. I love the lighting on the foreground tree.

    I think you could make a case for shooting that one tree even closer. It has more detailed character yet to be found by your lens.

    DHaass

    ReplyDelete
  3. I like this photo. It is simple, it has good lighting and you know what the subject is. I do agree with DHaass and Debbie, get rid of the border.
    Jeff

    ReplyDelete