Weekly Photo Challenge: Magic

Photography is like magic.  This photo for instance:

ISO 400 4.3mm 1/30 f/2.7

Looks like a nice peaceful and quiet spot right?  That’s exactly why I took the shot, because it stood out in stark contrast from the surrounding scene, a bustling Christmas Market at Ely Cathedral.  But finding this little gem of a scene was just the beginning.  The rest of the magic is in the editing.  Here is the original file:

ISO 400 4.3mm 1/30 f/2.7

You can see now that I did some edits that have a pretty big impact on the final file.  It wasn’t the first thing I did, but one of the edits that I think helped a lot was to use the healing brush tool in Photoshop to remove the mark on the column and some of the smudges on the pillar candle.  I could have removed all the imperfections on the candle but chose not to because the marks do remind the viewer that this is a spot that is used by many people.  I also warmed the temperature of the photo in Lightroom and applied a vignette to keep your eye in the frame. A version of the final is in my Picfair portfolio.

After taking my photo, I stayed here for a few minutes before heading back to the crowds and stalls of the market. Do you think photography is magical?  What do you think of the moment I have created here? I hope you found it peaceful and relaxing, as that was my intent.  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!

 

Travel Theme: Peaceful

This weekend I made a short visit to the St. Louis Zoo.  I had my 50mm lens on my camera when I saw this very peaceful looking lion:

ISO 250 50mm 0ev f/5.6 1/160

And right there you see the limitation of a 50mm lens.  I can’t get any closer to the subject, so that is as good of a shot as I am going to get.  So I switched to my 28-135mm lens for these next two shots:

ISO 400 135mm 0ev f/7.1 1/60

How peaceful looking is that? but remember to stay alert around wildlife because I took this picture 15 seconds later:

ISO 400 135mm 0ev f/7.1 1/80

Hello there, not asleep!

For the two shots taken with my 28-135mm lens I did have to increase the ISO and decrease the shutter speed to get the depth of field that I wanted.  I don’t find the rock outcropping that she is sleeping on to be distracting, so I wanted to keep it in focus.

My blogging friend Rosemarie wrote about the St. Louis Zoo recently and also took some great photos.

This post was written in part as for the weekly travel-theme challenge that is hosted on the blog, Where’s my backpack? this week featuring peaceful as its theme.

Thoughts? Comments? feel free to leave them below!

Cheers!