Autumn Evening
by
paul58Comment by paul58: Originally posted by KiwiPix:
So come on Paul, don't rip us off. How about a bit of a story about the shot and the process of getting it. Taht's the least you owe the voters :) |
OK! OK! I know that its nice to tell all about how about you did your entry. I just didn't really feel like I did anything particularly innovative to get this, but here goes:
It was late Monday afternoon & I still had no really good entry for either open challenge. But lately we've been having some quite pretty sunrises and sunsets. (This time of year is good for this in Northwestern Ontario, partly because of the length of the day. In late June, for instance, to capture a sunrise, one might have to rise at 4:00 or so in the morning, and it's still light at 11:00 PM).
Anyhow, as it got into early evening and it looked as if we could get a nice sunset, I started thinking about how to prepare, just in case. My wife had the car, so I didn't have the option of driving to some "perfect" spot. But we do have a pond on the property with cattails growing. The only problem is, it's down at the base of a hill in a less than optimum spot for capturing sunsets. So I ran down there (by now the sun was setting, and I wasn't yet set up!) found a spot where I could get some cattails without drowning, broke off an armfull of them (carefully chosen for form and character, of course), and ran up the hill to our back field, where the sun was now setting. Realizing that I needed some way to stand them up, I (now getting desperate) sprinted back down to my house to look for something (anything!) to use for a "flower pot". I quickly located a chunk of hollow poplar log from my firewood pile, and hightailed it back up to where my cattails were. After strategically arranging them in their "pot", I set up my camera as low as my tripod will allow and proceeded to capture this "tranquil" scene. (I had to lay on the ground to shoot - and (puff,puff...) boy, did I need the break! The sky that evening really was spectacular, and it was (and always is) great to be there to enjoy it! It didn't take take an awful lot of tweaking on the computer to end up with what you see here. In Paint Shop Pro 8, I used the histogram adjustment for contrast, both for luminance and for colors. Then upped the saturation a little, resized, applied unsharp mask.
And thanks again for all the comments & votes. Hope to learn (and share) lots more in the days to come!
Message edited by author 2005-10-05 15:02:49. 
Photographer found comment helpful.
to boot Paul!