Thursday, November 19, 2009
Portrait of November #4
I wonder if Stephen Covey is a photographer? The second of his 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is "Begin with the end in mind." I find that I employ that nugget of advice practically every time I trip the shutter on my camera. I usually have a very well developed idea of the finished version of every frame I snap. That vision guides my choice of settings on my camera and the frame that I capture is well within the range of that which I envisioned. Usually.
As I considered these two subjects at Glacial Park in McHenry County, Illinois, I imagined that these two photos would "sing" with a deep twilight sky in the background. The only problem being that at the time I took these, it was three o'clock in the afternoon on an overcast day. I took them anyway, intending to lay in some color later.
The sky color came from another photo taken in precisely the conditions I imagined -- deep twilight on a clear evening. I sampled several areas of the sky in this photograph that I took last summer and used the colors as the basis for a graduated fill, which was layered and blended over the nearly white sky in the two photos above.
I used to be a photographic purist who only accepted what came out of the camera, for better or worse, with no manipulations afterward. Back then, I probably wouldn't have taken these photos in the first place, and if I did, they probably would have gone unpublished. These days, I let my vision be my guide and when necessary, employ Mr. Covey's sixth habit -- Synergize.
Photographs © 2009 James Jordan.
Labels:
Autumn,
Farms and Barns,
Golden Hour,
Sky and Clouds,
Time passages,
Twilight
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Just breathtaking, James!
Post a Comment