Spring is beginning to make itself known with temperatures warming up, trees starting to bud out, and a few wildflowers popping up here and there. Everything is pointing to some great photographic opportunities soon upon us.
But, the season is still two, maybe three, weeks away from being in full bloom, so to speak. So, when I wanted to get out and do some photography recently, I was struggling to figure out where I wanted to go. I decided to make the relatively short drive to Pinnacle Mountain State Park, and I was accompanied by my wife and dog for the trip. On past trips, I have not usually been able to create many good photographs, so I wasn’t expecting much from this trip, either. But, I wasn’t going to worry about that. Rather, I was just going to enjoy being outdoors in the fresh, albeit chilly, air.
Our first stop was the Arkansas Trail located in the area of the park known as Arkansas Arboretum. The Arkansas Arboretum is a 71-acre site exhibiting native flora representing Arkansas’s six, major natural divisions. I’ve never been able to tell much difference from one division to the next, and, frankly, I’m not sure there really is a difference. Regardless, though, the area is usually a very quiet, tranquil place to walk, especially early in the morning.
We slowly walked the trails, and my head was on a swivel as I looked from side to side and up and down for something that caught my eye to photograph. Several times, I noticed some fresh Spring greenery through the trees; while it looked pretty to the eye, I knew those scenes would not make for very good photographs for a variety of reasons.
After about an hour, we loaded up and headed to another stop, the Kingfisher Trail. Based on what I had observed earlier, I decided to leave my equipment in the car and just enjoy the walk. As I expected, nothing caught my eye, but I enjoyed the walk.
We got back to the car and began heading home. As we were pulling out of the parking lot, I spotted this scene of a tree full of brightly lit spring leaves peeking out from behind the trunks of some foreground trees. I pointed it out to my wife and slowly drove on. But, I couldn’t pass on the opportunity, so I turned the car around, parked, grabbed my gear, and set up on the edge of the parking lot.
I took a few minutes to consider my composition and experiment with different aspect ratios before deciding a square crop would frame the scene the way I wanted it. I then turned my attention to exposure. While the leaves were brightly lit, the rest of the area was in relatively deep shade. The camera would want to brighten the shadow areas, which would cause the leaves to be overexposed. To compensate for this, I used the exposure compensation feature to reduce the exposure by 1⅓ stops. Then, I pressed the shutter button and captured the image.
Processing the file, I made several adjustments to emphasize the contrast between the leaves and the trees in shadows, including darkening the shadows and brightening the highlights. I further enhanced the leaves by increasing their luminance and saturation. There were several leaves at the bottom of the frame that were distracting, so I used the spot removal tool to remove those leaves from the frame. The upper left corner was a little brighter than I wanted it to be, so I applied a linear gradient to that section of the image to darken just a bit so it would blend with the rest of the shadow areas. Lastly, I used the texture and clarity sliders to create a softer, more ethereal feel to this final picture.