Sepia Trees
f/13, 1/60, ISO-100, 18mm
So what do you do with a picture of some trees on a hill that just sort of are there and don’t offer much in the way of a statement? This is actually the sort of picture that I usually wouldn’t even raise my camera to my eye for, let alone snap the shutter. But I was drawn by the long shadow and the challenge of getting it in the picture without including my own shadow as well (not an easy feat…and no, I didn’t Photoshop myself out of it :) )
So I poked around a bit and even though I wasn’t particularly enthralled with what I was seeing in the viewfinder I took the exposure anyway (just one, because after all I only have a 32 GB card and can only fit like 1700 exposures on it, so I have to be judicious about such things. LOL) to see if I could do something with it in post production.
In Lightroom I attempted various ways to inject some color and life into the image, and kept hitting the reset button. Nothing was really working. Then I hit on the idea of black and white, and everything changed. The grass was suddenly interesting, the trees seemed sharper (which I accentuated even more with the sharpness slider). I fiddled with adding more striking vignette than I normally work with and finally added some yellow tint, and the sepia is what really made this image, I think. I am very pleased with it and it has earned a place as my desktop wallpaper.
Not bad for a photo I almost didn’t bother taking.
That one long shadow is very interesting. What was it a shadow of? The sepia tone works well with this photo.
The shadow is just a power line pole, the sort of thing that usually gives me fits, but this time I was able to use it to my advantage.
EDIT: actually, now that I think about it, it’s the same shadow and pole from the “Fake Panorama” image posted just prior to this one. I think I just turned around and took another shot :)