Imagine. You are 16 years old and you wake-up on Christmas morning and find a loveable, 60+, little fuzz ball of a photographer under the Christmas tree as one of your presents. That is what Master Tom found this last Christmas morning. He got ME as a Christmas present from his grandmother.
I know all of you want the “rest of the story.”
I had agreed with Tom’s grandmother to shoot a family portrait for the their Christmas present. I must admit, I knew this would be a very daunting task since there are 19 members of the family and I only use Nikon SB’s for my portrait work. After taking the family portrait (which by the way turned out very nice), grandma informed me that she wanted portraits of the various families and groups of children. So, what I thought was one portrait turned-out to be 32 different combinations of family members.
Now, this is where Master Tom enters the scene. He has become interested in photography so he volunteered to help me. He was amazing. He ran here, he ran there, adjusting this light then that light. I could not believe how much energy this boy had. Throughout the entire process, he was peppering me with tons of questions.
After I delivered all the prints, grandma asked if I would teach Master Tom about photography. We agreed to 10 one-hour lessons. So, I became one of Master Tom’s Christmas presents.
We have had four lessons so far. And, quite frankly, I am amazed at how eager he is to learn and how quickly he is learning.
On Saturday, I agreed to meet he and his dad in Dayton, Texas where they have a small ranch. We were going to do some landscape photography and I knew of couple places in that area that might be interesting to photograph. We wondered over to Liberty to photograph an old bridge (Barry Armer posted a nice photograph of the bridge earlier this year) and some old farms. While photographing that bridge, I noticed this old railroad bridge. I like the reflection in the water and the relatively simple background.
Master Tom was not really into photographing the old railroad bridge. I asked him why? He told me that the bridge was not very interesting. I told him that he was not seeing the final image. He needed to see the image that we were going to develop, not the one we were currently taking. He gave me that 16-year-old's "yea, sure" look.
With that in mind, what post processing would you do to improve this photograph? Let me know how you would finish this photograph; and, why!
Camera settings: Nikon D3, 17-35 f/2.8 at 17mm with polarizing filter attached, shot at ISO 200, f/22 and 1/15 second.
Post Processing:
Lightroom—set white and black point, added mid-tone contrast, and adjusted luminosity of various colors.
Photoshop—cloned-out trash in river and darkened water using curves in luminosity mode.
There was no color film 80 years ago, thus the photo must be converted to B&W. Also, I wonder whether they actually produced photos that had this much detail 80 years ago. I want to see what you do with this one because I am with Tom, this is not that interesting.
ReplyDeleteDebbie
I would overwork it with filters, Barry would add a pot, Marvin would convert it to B&W, Chad would add his girlfriend, Jamin Chen would mail it in, and Tim would have waited for a bird to fly in the frame!
ReplyDeleteYou nailed it!
ReplyDeleteThe Lucis Art plug-in works great for architecture. Also, like Larry said, black and white with Silver Efex. And in a perfect world, come back when the lighting is a little less hard. Oh, and a night shot with a little old white-haired VAL under the bridge with an SB800 would be nice.
ReplyDeleteNot very interesting, so junk it. I cannot see much hope in this one.
ReplyDeleteJeff
Larry, I think Debbie and Jeff have thrown down the gauntlett on this one! ** NO PRESSURE **
ReplyDeleteIt is hard to image how you can do much with this one. Even converting it to B&W does not seem be enough to make all the pieces fit together. Good luck with this one.
ReplyDeleteAnne