Thank you to everyone who came out and practiced their photography skills with me. It was a great time to get out with your fellow photographers and learning a new thing or two to boost that skill set of ours. For those who didn’t attend and are curious I taught an advanced nature photo walk at Clay Pit Ponds State Park Preserve. We skipped the classroom and went straight into the field.
We started out at Sharrotts Pond and then worked the trails. No specific shot was sought after just anything and everything that was in our path. From landscapes to macros we had it covered.
Looking to the skies for a photograph was an option I normally don’t take. I tend to have a hard time making it work. Plus a lot of the time like most if you take this shot with your typical auto settings that sky will be blown out and white. Well; the key is knowing how to deal with that exposure. I happened to like the dramatic light filtering through. This gave me the opportunity to get the sky into exposure and create something dramatic. Underexposing over a stop did the trick and made the rest fall into place. In post I added a touch of saturation to the skies and a black point to the darks.
Don’t underestimate the power of a well placed black point. Here is an image without the black point dropped.
This is the same image with the black point dropped in. It’s subtle, but I think its vital to making subjects pop. If your looking for a black point in the options for your post process workflow look for an icon like this:
Along the green trail there is a great fern meadow that I always like to look for images in. Now obviously this one didn’t come out of the camera like this. I used Silver Efex Pro from NIK to make this happen. Using antique plate II and combining it with a green b&w filter. High contrast is always a great lighting source to seek out. Knowing how to put it to work is the real key.
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