Well, I really meant to not let so much time lapse from my last post – but you know the saying it goes on the best-laid plans. I’ve been busy integrating a newly adopted dog into our household, working some of my volunteer activities, and a host of other things. Sadly, my time in the field making photographs has suffered some.

For this post, I thought I would keep it short, but also try something new. In keeping with “My Own Rule of Thirds” Vison-Exposure-Develop philosophy, I thought I would approach the post about this particular image the same way. In short: Vision usually includes what attracted me to a scene or situation, Exposure is getting it recorded in some way, and Develop involves trying to get what I recorded to match up with what that first step of Vision is, which isn’t always easy. I go into more detail on the link above.

Vision

What I saw: beautiful light illuminating the trees across the landscape

Springtime snow isn’t a unique occurrence in Michigan, even as much as we’d like it to be over when that start day passes on the calendar. Honestly, I haven’t been out in the field for sunrise in, well, a while. But this light from this sunrise was quite magical, even if only experienced from the view of my backyard. Combined with the overnight snowfall, most tree branches were covered with snow. I suppose I had the itch to record something, and this large Eastern Cottonwood tree in the woods behind us became the chosen subject. The snow-covered branches were just glowing against the sky behind it. It is interesting because there are only very rare occasions the branches of this very large tree have any sort of unifying visual theme.

Exposure

What tools I needed: a camera – quick – this light is not going to last

This tree is quite large, and the segments I wanted to photograph are quite high up – maybe 80 feet (24m) or so. The light was changing VERY fast. I simply grabbed the most flexible tool I had available – which was an 80-400 zoom. In fact, I was only able to record 2 different compositions before the light fizzled out. The old saying of f8 and be there applied directly in this case. This scene only needed 90mm. Fortunately, the lens has image stabilization because I had to hand-hold, no time to fetch the tripod.

I always find making a composition of tree branches to be a bit challenging. It is hard to visualize if they are going to “flow” in any cohesive manner in a resulting 2D visual. Sometimes you just have to go with your gut, especially with fading light.

Develop

My developing goal: emphasize the branches and morning light

The challenge: raw files tend to flatten all tones out, and that flattens out the visual experience as well – a lot of details that need to contrast with the sky behind them – wrestle with a graphically busy image

I didn’t even download this image until nearly a month later, so the moment faded a bit. But I still remembered the light of that particular morning and the snow. Those are the two key visual elements I wanted to make sure stood out. The raw file, as usual, didn’t quite pop the branches as I experienced. I tried adjusting the sky exposure down a bit using the selective masking tools in Lightroom but that just wasn’t working. I then tried adjusting the luminosity of the colors of the sky down a bit, also not working. Each option in Lightroom was leaving edge halos around all the branches.

Bringing the image into Photoshop and using a couple of luminosity masks based on the semi-uniform colors of the sky did the trick. No halos and I was able to bring enough tonal contrast between the branches, snow, and the sky to recreate the moment I experienced. For me, the curved branches help serve as visual anchors a bit. I am keenly sensitive to drawing too much attention to edges, and this image has a lot of graphical elements on the edges of the frame.

It only took a couple of layers to end with an image I am satisfied with. I do think if it weren’t for the snow and the morning light, this image would be pushing it as far as being too messy for my tastes. Maybe it still is for some. It also served as a reminder of just how fleeting these moments can be.