While I was working on the photo I shared last week, I noticed a small area in the background that I thought would make an interesting picture. A “scene within a scene,” so to speak. However, cropping the image was not a practical solution because the area was too small, and the effect on resolution and,ultimately, image quality would have been disastrous. There was only one way to solve the problem. I had to make another trip back to the creek. So, two weeks later, I did exactly that.
When I arrived that morning, the sky was just beginning to lighten, but it was bright enough for me to make my way down the trail to the creek. Getting to the location for my shot, I looked upstream to discover a fog that was far thicker than it was on my previous trip. The fog combined with the slight glow of light gave the scene a very fantasy-like look that I thought was simply amazing.
Ensuring separation between the four main trees was important, and there were only a few spots from which I could photograph without losing that separation. Because I was set up a pretty fair distance from the actual subject, I used my 100-400mm lens at 100mm to frame the area I wanted.
To ensure the highest image quality possible, I set the ISO at 100 and used a medium aperture of f/11. This required a long shutter speed of eight seconds. However, because it was still early in the morning, there was no wind or air movement. That eliminated my concern about shutter speed. It certainly did not help alleviate the warm, humid conditions by the creek.
To process the file, I began by making several basic adjustments to the overall exposure and contrast. However, there were two things I did that I think really make this image. First, I cropped the frame from its original 3:2 aspect ratio to a 4:3 ratio, which tightened up the composition.
The second thing I did was to increase the color temperature. Because the scene was being illuminated by reflected light from the clear blue sky, the image had a cool blue tone that didn’t fit with my vision. Increasing the color temperature corrected this and created the image I envisioned.