It’s getting to be that time of the year when all we have are grey skies to look up to. Sometimes it makes shooting a little bit harder to mentally figure out what to do. We have had some real nice days lately, cold nights but nice days. I went out cruising, nothing more than a camera on my lap, looking to see what I could find. It does help to clear out the mind to just drive and look and not have a plan or agenda. I was heading along the Gallatin river when I stopped at this one corner for these Cottonwoods and this cool old house. Great thing about Montana, you can find old buildings almost anywhere.
One thing I did with both of these images is I lit more of the areas I wanted to, with the adjustment brush in ACR. I keep playing around with that tool and find it can be really useful. ACR now has just amazing sliders, especially with highlights, shadows and whites. The brush combines those sliders with power of “brushing” in the areas you want or don’t want to show. It’s kind of useful. For instance the foreground in the top image, and the house in the bottom image were brought out with the brush without disturbing the rest of the image. I haven’t integrated this into my workflow completely yet but it is fun to play with.
In the Camera Bag;
Nikon D3, 24-70 AF-S f/2.8, on Lexar UDMA Digital Film