While looking out the window, I noticed how the sun was shining on an oak leaf and thought it might make an interesting picture.
I used an 85mm f/1.4 lens to control depth of field so I could throw everything but the leaf out of focus.
It rained pretty much all morning, and at times the rain got rather heavy. I looked out the back and saw water running off the oak tree and thought there might be a possible picture in it.
For this picture, I cropped the original, adjusted exposure and black levels, added contrast, sharpened it and added a vignette. Those are pretty much standard adjustments I make for any image. This fairly accurately represents the scene. Water can be seen dripping from the limb.
I took that image and converted it to black and white. This helped remove distracting areas of color, but almost seemed too sterile.
I went back to the original image and started by removing color saturation. That helped remove distracting areas of color. To give it a little more interest, I added a very light sepia tone to it.
I have been attending meetings in Marksville, LA for the past few days. Before going, I looked at a map and found there are two wildlife refuges on either side of Marksville. Yesterday, I took some time to visit Gand Cote NWR. It didn’t have a great deal to offer, but I think it is rather early for migratory waterfowl. Anyway, I got a couple of good landscapes.
There was a rather substantial wetlands area. The nature trail led up to it, and then a bridge led to an observation platform over the water. These are two images taken from the bridge.
Tamron lenses sponsored a photography contest for “Countryside” images. I entered two of my photographs. All together, they received close to 14,000 entries. There are two components to the judging. Anyone can go to the contest entires and vote for the one they like best. Then, professional judges will evaluate the images and the final winners will be chosen. The public voting period has ended, and I was notified that this images was in the top 50 vote getters.
As they say on TV, But, Wait. There’s more. This image was in the top 10 vote getters.
