April 17
Written April 18-20
Dear Friends and Family,Written April 18-20
Early on the fourth day of our trip I finally got around to trying more than snapshots. I did the required before-dawn excursion, to look for a good picture at sunrise. The easiest target was the lake dock just a few hundred yards away. Here's what I got:
I took for 45 minutes, from the well-before-dawn blue twilight up through the almost-sunny dawn. I took a zillion shots. (Mistake#1.) I probably left early (Mistake #2), because my hands were frozen (no gloves. Mistake #3) and I knew I already had plenty of work ahead of me. It has taken me days to just have a few shots to show. I chose "high dynamic range" (HDR) for these first ones, because the light contrast was just too large for a single shot. (Maybe mistake #4, but I'll go back and try working in the "darkroom" on a few single shots.)
Here are my first four (HDR):
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Here are the same shots, as taken and saved as "jpeg" by the camera. No special adjustment:
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Lessons and observations:
See mistakes #1 through #4. Inherent in these is the reality to take fewer pictures, and be patient waiting for the right ones. Ironically, as I write this diary, there is a much more colorful sunrise happening. I should be down at the dock re-taking these pictures, but I find I am saturated with this particular scene. I think real professionals don't get saturated!
Another observation is that, even if one or two of these shots were to be truly special, I don't know what I would do with them. Pictures on the web, viewed on relatively small screens at relatively low resolution, just are not worth the effort. We have already run out of wall space at home, so making large prints, only to file them away, seems a bit pointless.
The last lesson is that taking a good picture or two takes time. The other excursions on our trip have involved "snapshots", interesting and enough for a web-diary, but not interesting enough to work much on in the post-production computer process. However, I do need to explore that observation before I lock it in as a "lesson".
We'll see what other "good" pictures I get on this trip.
Regards,
John
ps: On my way back from the dock, I did take a picture of the scene here in Wahaha Paradise. Here, the HDR worked. Maybe a lesson in here (maybe this is why real estate photographers have shifted to HDR?).
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