Among my most powerful of antidotes is being alone outdoors with my camera. So, in advance of my weekly Sunday evening men's gathering, I took thirty minutes to focus on the beauty and peace of roses, again practicing with my tripod as the subjects were in the deep shade of buildings and, at 7.30pm, the light was evaporating.
Ahhhhhh. After some time behind the lens my soul felt a bit refreshed.
A meeting with my fellows, followed by a quick snack (somehow dinner was skipped), and I found myself suddenly knackered. Yet, on my screen when I got home was the raw, untreated version of the image I offer here (not a rose, you'll quickly note). I felt compelled . . . The reward for diverting my mind from tribulation to art was this: I managed to get a handle on one of the niftier tools in Lr, the adjustment brush. It saved the day here: in the original image the sky was completely washed out; fixing this with the brush took seconds, once I figured it out. I effectively decreased the exposure of the sky by 1 f/stop. To provide a correspondingly correct effect -- a better reflection of reality -- a similar fix was required in the glassed space . . . by experimentation I found the a nudge of -0.5 f/stop was better there. Finally, a twist on the same Lr brush allowed me to apply the equivalent of Photoshop CS3's Unsharp Mask to the scene.
Voilà!
Shriner Leanings, NYC, #1799
(c)2009 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.
(click image for larger version)
Details: November 24, 2008; Canon 20D, f/9, 1/250 sec, ISO 200, 85mm.
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