Serenity Composition Project |
I spent the weekend working (and camping) at the New York
Capital District Renaissance Festival. The festival was held on a farm, and
thus the camping situation was on those grounds. I was surrounded with awesome
sunrises and sunsets, animals, and rustic barns. In front of where I slept was
Rosie, their longhaired steer. I found
her and her enclosure to be so beautiful. Plus, in the morning the sky behind
her was amazing.
CAMERA SETTINGS
WB: Shade
Aperture: f18
Shutter Speed: 1/80
ISO: 160
This picture was taken at 5:45am and the sun had just risen
behind me. The mood is light, and just serene.
In Photoshop:
The original image was very dark, so the first
thing I did was to increase the exposure by +1.5 and the gamma correction by
+1.0. I then adjusted the curves of the
image to a loose “s” type curve. I
balanced the colors so that the clouds stood out. I had to use some clone
stamping, and patch tools to take care of some glaring highlights, and odd The
last thing I did was isolate Rosie, and made her slightly brighter and more
vibrant. I did this so that she stood out from the brown dirt and barn that was
above and below her.
Compositional Elements:
Since this is a composition project,
I tried to use a few compositional elements. I made sure to use the rule of
thirds, while positioning Rosie. I think the barn adds a fair amount of
texture, as does the depth in the clouds. And even though you can’t see her
eyes, I am using the compositional element of dominant eye. She was completely
posing for my camera.
Final Thoughts
I believe that the strongest part of this image is Miss
Rosie. I truly feel that she is the undeniable focus of this image. The weakest part I think might be my
cropping. I kept going back and forth about the feeding trough to the left of
Rosie. I left it in because I felt it set the scene appropriately. I found this
assignment to be my most successful yet. I shot a few of these in Manual, and a
few in Aperture mode. I found the images
that were taken with Aperture “A” mode to be more visually appealing. However, the others were still considerably
better than images I had taken prior to this class. Something I learned about during this
assignment was about moving subjects. I had to be very patient with Rosie, and had
to come back a few times in order to achieve a group of images that I thought
would work for this project.
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