I am not the world’s greatest photographer. I do, however, take a shit-ton of pictures, have a good camera, and actively try to figure out how to get better at taking them.
One of the biggest things I’ve learned about pictures shot on a good camera in RAW format is that you can do a lot with them after image has been taken. Some information embedded in the image file can be exaggerated and saturated so as to present an intensity perhaps not present in the moment of the image. Or maybe just see the intensity that you weren’t able to.
It was about 4:10 PM on an unseasonably warm early January afternoon. I noticed that the sunset was pretty cool, and realized that it would be good to get my 12-year old son off of the Internet and out for a walk, so we booked it out to Lincoln Marsh. By the time we hiked out to the spot, the sun was lower than I wanted it to be (damned nature!), but I kept shooting. Here’s how they turned out, with the glories of post-processing:
Reds are easy:
You can feel the ooze with so many muted winter mushroom blacks and browns and greys:
The mild winter means green still lives amid brown fallen leaves:
You can see what I mean on the sun setting so soon:
Here’s where fidelity comes into play. The landscape seems washed out without any enhancement, January-style:
Sometimes I just give up and put on a sepia filter:
Or go pure black + white:
This vista is probably the most faithful take on the view we shared:
But the next shot can be made unnecessarily foreboding:
Or deeply blue with near-trickery of saturation:
Moon on late-afternoon blue sky is true:
And by now pink comes into play:
By firing the flash on reeds I can make it scary up front and bucolic in the back:
I can get down low to show the fact of darkness nestled near the ground, with light that will soon be a memory up top:
Tightening on dead reeds and cooling off the colors reminds us it is winter:
