Weekly Photo Challenge: Glow

In photography, there is often a lot said about the golden hour, including the fact that there are two of them. Like a lot of the rules of photography, you get some great results by paying attention, it is a fabulous time for natural light to infuse your photography.

Very nice, but my life often doesn’t work that way.  I have to make do with the light I have at the time. As a result, I’m almost always thinking about lighting and working with what I have to make a nice photograph.  Here is a nice bit of light I found and exploited:

ISO 1600 19mm f/22 1/250

To me, this photo is all about the soft glow of red and orange tones.  Here is the scene as I originally saw and shot it:

ISO 1600 19mm f/22 1/250

When I was taking this photo, I wanted to get as much of the scene as possible, so that included sky and surrounding trees, even though I thought I might be cropping later. When I went to edit the photo, I added an orange tinted filter and also boosted the orange and red tones in the photo, their saturation and luminance.

As far as cropping went, I used another rule of photography, and that is the rule of thirds.  Here is a screen shot with the rule of thirds grid applied to the photo as I was cropping:

Screen shot of the cropping process.

What I was thinking was that the docked boats were the point of interest and most prominent part of the orange tones. It was the way the light was illuminating the interior of the boats that made me take a photo in the first place. I have placed them at one of the grid intersections. This size crop also allows for the curve of the bridge and the people on it to be standing in a spot where your eye is likely to rest.  These are things that strengthen the composition of this image.

What do you think, do you like my interpretation of the light and the crop of this image? Your comments are welcome below.

Cheers!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Evanescent

As with most places I have lived, I know that I am only going to be here for a few years. It’s an evanescent way of life, when you know you will be packing soon.  I think my photography sometimes captures that as well.  Last week, I took this image while out on a walk:

ISO 500 50mm f/16 1/200

It was a beautiful day, and it wasn’t raining in England! Ok, well maybe somewhere in England it was, but not on the little part that I happened to be walking on.  This spot was near the end of the walk, and I knew I had to take a photo as I approached, who could pass on a scene like this?

This image is quite a busy one in my opinion, full of texture.  When I went to edit it I could see that there were a lot of competing elements. In this version I wanted to highlight the church.  I did a few things to accomplish that.  First was cropping.  I have cropped the image so that using the rule of thirds grid. The right side of the church runs along the right vertical guide grid and the top flat part of the roof, meets the top horizontal of the grid.  Here is a screen shot that shows the grid:

The faint lines you see are the grid that is referred to as “the rule of thirds”

Once I had the church situated in what I thought was a good spot, I did my other edits.  I gave the photo a bit of a faded look overall but then used the radial filter in Lightroom to bring a bit of focus to the church.  By making the church brighter than it surroundings I am making it stand out.  The radial filter controls in Lightroom are nice in that you can make the focus point as large or small as you would like.  I ended up including a bit of the land in front of the church because I thought it helped draw your eye to the church.

I liked this version, so I added it to my Picfair portfolio.  Do you like the edits? Do you ever think about the fact that you are capturing a fleeting moment when you are taking a photo?  Feel free to leave a comment below.

Cheers!