I had the chance to take the camera out a little bit when I was out the with the kids yesterday.
By the time we arrived to the park it was after 1:00pm and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so I had no expectations of any spectacular images.
While the kids were finishing their meals, I walked to a couple of trees with shadows that interested me. I liked the fractal nature of the above image and the sweeping curve of the below image. I’ll never print either of them; they were just something to point my camera at. Both images are almost entirely SOOC with only a lift of the shadows. Everything else (for better or worse) was manipulated pre-capture with in-camera settings. I also confess to not recognizing the suitability of the square crop to the second image until I was home.
I applied the same JPEG settings the pictures that I would capture of the kids finishing their meals. I recognized the light right away and was able to frame their heads nicely within the shadows behind them. I liked how their legs were both crossed. Initially, I really didn’t like that they weren’t seated in the middle of the bench and wished that I was there as a third person, but I was gonna capture what I could in the moment.
Then I got the files home and started to look at them and thought myself a bit of a nincompoop. Sure, the light framing them was nice in monochrome, but – for crying out-loud – those iconic french fry packages needed to be red. And that bench as a subject – it is long, so I had captured the image in a landscape orientation, but when I think of the kids and the light behind them as the subject, a portrait orientation becomes apparent and I am suddenly far-less bothered by the end of the bench not being full or visible in this portrait orientation (especially with a 5×4 crop instead of the 4×6 which I often use by default when capturing snapshots).
I should have seen all of this at the time, but I need to continue to practice more … a lot more.
After lunch, we walked to the shore and took in the sights before heading home. There was little opportunity for any other photos aside from this snapshot of the statue of Linklaen at the park. We can’t be certain if the scarf that is adorning the monument is a lost item or if someone purposefully donated their own scarf, but it was interesting nonetheless. I captured the JPEG in monochrome, but knew that I would be experimenting with both treatments and suspected that the color would be the preferred image and I was right.
Today proved as a good example as to why I should bring my camera with me more often … I still have a lot to see and learn, even in bad light.