Friday, February 25, 2011

Seeing 2011 (#29)

For your consideration: an interesting, and perhaps ponderous, twist on the theme of Arizona cacti.

This image posed real exposure challenges, due to heavy yet semi-opaque cloud cover and the Sun's location being aligned closer to the line-of-site than was comfortable . . . The issue was balancing the large discrepancies of luminosity between the sky (actually quite bright) and the shadowed side of the main subject.

The approach taken was to created an identical copy of the original photograph, adjust deep shadow and sky highlight details, then stacking the adjusted version on top of the original as a layer mask . . .

This method afforded considerable control over the tonal range by means of simple, selective "painting."



Elephantine Saguaro, Sonora Desert, #9813

© 2011 James W. Murray, all rights reserved.

(click image for larger version)

Details: February 19, 2011; Canon 20D; f/11 @ 1/1250 sec; ±0 EV; ISO 400; 320mm.

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