I am often thinking about all the places I would like to visit and things I would like to photograph one day. New England, the American Southwest, and the Pacific Northwest are just a couple of places that are on my list. But, I often forget there are still a lot of new places to discover right in my own town.
A couple of weeks ago, I discovered one of those new places on my way home from work. I pass by the location at least twice a day nearly every day, yet I had never noticed it before. I’m not sure exactly what it was that caught my eye, but I knew I would have to go back with my camera.
A few days ago, I finally had the opportunity to go back. I got up at 6:15, left the house at 6:30, and was there by 6:35. That’s how close it is to my house.
With a clear blue sky and the sun coming up right at 7:00, I knew I wouldn’t have much time to get pictures before the lighting became too harsh and contrasty. By 7:15, that’s exactly what happened, so I slowly began making my way back to truck.
As I was walking back, I came upon this site. What caught my attention was the contrast between the lines and angles of small group of trees in the foreground and the random, almost chaotic, growth of the vegetation in the background that provided a sense of mystery to me as I looked at.
I set up my camera and composed the image. I first tried a horizontal composition, but I wasn’t pleased with it. The space between the foreground trees and background seemed compressed, and that wasn’t what I had in mind. Switching the camera to a vertical position solved that issue.
When I got home and reviewed the image on my computer, the first thing I did was crop the photo to a 4×5 aspect ratio. This further emphasized the cluster of trees without minimizing the space between them and the background.
It was a good start, but I still wasn’t quite satisfied. While the trees were slightly brighter than the background, there wasn’t as much difference between them as I thought there would be. To create the sense of mystery I wanted to convey, I used the adjustment brush in Lightroom to increase the exposure of the trees while reducing the exposure in the background.
After spending time on adjusting the exposure in different areas of the image, things began to come together, and I was close to have a photograph I was pleased with. However, there was one last thing that kept bothering me.
I thought I could ignore it and it would be ok. But, every time I looked at the picture, my eye kept going back to it, and I found to be very distracting: a long, leafless horizontal branch growing from the trunk of one of the trees. I finally decided it just had to go, so I opened the file in Photoshop and carefully cloned out the offending limb.
So, what did I learn from this experience? I learned that photographic locations and opportunities are everywhere, and I don’t have to travel far to find them.