January 30th: Construction zone
30th January 2008
Another walk on the trails around work today. This is on the other side of the main campus from my building so it took a bit of time to get over there. I felt like I was forcing the photos today and it shows. This construction zone sign seemed so incongruous among the trees and the trail, although this is not nearly so peaceful a location as it might seem: just the left of the frame is a busy road and the sound of traffic is close. And yet it is peaceful walking these trails with the mossy trees and the tall pines moving in the wind.
Shooting and processing notes
I downloaded a 30-day trial of LightZone 3.4 today to see what it would be like to use it. Uwe Steinmuller has written a lot about it and I had tried it once before when it was still version 2. This definitely has power but–oh my!–is it ever slow on my computer. My computer at home has fallen way behind the power curve but since I still shoot with an 8-megapixel 20D I have never been bothered in Lightroom or Photoshop. LightZone lets me know that my computer is old.
The shutter speed was way too low on this shot even though I was braced against a tree. It was dark under the trees (and the clouds were thick, too, so a double whammy). This was 1/10 sec at f/8 and ISO 400. Shot again with the 17-40 F4.0 L at 17mm. This is one of those places where I could use the EF-S 17-55 f/2.8 with its image stabilization.
As far as changes I made in LightZone, I used the Relight option to punch up the mid-tone contrast and I drew a region around the sign and increased the saturation of the yellow. I also used the tone mapper to deepen the color a bit. From the angle I shot, the sign reflected some of the sky and was washed out in the picture–quite different from the way it looked to me.
Update (31-Jan-2008): I meant to mention Martin Doonan’s blog and a post he made about LightZone that finally pushed me over the edge to try the program. His posts are not just about technical tools like LightZone but about photography, art, and the process of making it.
Photo a Day 2008 Links
Photo a Day 2008
Photo a Day 2008: January
Flickr: Collection: Photo a Day 2008
Flickr: January 2008 Photoset
Flickr: January 2008 Extras Photoset
January 31st, 2008 at 3:42
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