Grain and Wire - The Third Time is the Charm
New explorations result in new images. You can't sit around and wait for things to jump in front of your lens.
Having first stumbled upon this scene two weeks ago on one of my walkabouts, I shot it, but due to the lateness in the day and the fact that I had forgotten my tripod in the studio, I had to open my aperture all of the way to get enough light to hand hold this. The resulting image was an image with too little depth of field. The wire was nice and sharp, but the grain of the wood was a little to soft. If I reversed my focal point, the wood was beautifully rendered, but the wire knot was too soft.
I waited for a nice hazy slightly overcast day and went back, this time with my tripod slung over my shoulder. Just as a got there, the sky opened up and the sun poured through, illuminating my fencepost with the power of 168,000 candles. The resulting image had too many deep shadows and too extreme a contrast to handle the way I had envisioned the image. I waited for an hour and a half for the sun to retreat behind the clouds, but it was not to be. By the time the sun had relinquished its place in the sky, it was too dark for me to get another, better, shot.
The third time was the charm. A nice bright sunlight, but diffused by a thin blanket of low hanging stratus clouds, providing me with very soft shadows, but enough light to properly capture the texture, contrast, and tonal range that I was striving for.
Having first stumbled upon this scene two weeks ago on one of my walkabouts, I shot it, but due to the lateness in the day and the fact that I had forgotten my tripod in the studio, I had to open my aperture all of the way to get enough light to hand hold this. The resulting image was an image with too little depth of field. The wire was nice and sharp, but the grain of the wood was a little to soft. If I reversed my focal point, the wood was beautifully rendered, but the wire knot was too soft.
I waited for a nice hazy slightly overcast day and went back, this time with my tripod slung over my shoulder. Just as a got there, the sky opened up and the sun poured through, illuminating my fencepost with the power of 168,000 candles. The resulting image had too many deep shadows and too extreme a contrast to handle the way I had envisioned the image. I waited for an hour and a half for the sun to retreat behind the clouds, but it was not to be. By the time the sun had relinquished its place in the sky, it was too dark for me to get another, better, shot.
The third time was the charm. A nice bright sunlight, but diffused by a thin blanket of low hanging stratus clouds, providing me with very soft shadows, but enough light to properly capture the texture, contrast, and tonal range that I was striving for.
ISO 400 ----- 60mm ----- f14 ----- 1/30th sec.
If you see an image, and you don't get it quite right, don't settle for "close enough" or "good enough" or "its pretty good". Suck it up, figure out what you can do to improve it, and go shoot it again. Shoot it again after that if you need to. Keep shooting it until you get it right. And by "right", I mean "as you have envisioned the image to appear when you are done".
4 comments:
Quite nice. Nicely said as well.
We don't get to see the other, discarded images? What a jip.
Good advice, though. I especially appreciate the "suck it up' part.
oh, this is great!
Beautiful.
Lucy
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