favourite #1. no one loves – but me

Today is a very special day – I am going to write about the making of one of my special favourites, which no one loves – but me.

As I mentioned in one of my latest articles it is most important to develop and keep your own style in photography (and everywhere else as well – by the way!) – so (for me as a keen photo enthusiast) it is not important if everyone likes my images – but it is most important, if I like them, and what I am feeling looking at them. I would like to show you the “making of” of one of those “rather difficult” images – it is one of my favourites.

The image was taken – or better carefully composed at the end of April 2018 in our garden in Ehrendingen, a small village a few miles away from Zurich. I still remember the beautiful soft and warm evening light. I wanted to catch this last light of the day in my photograph – but in a different way than before. I had a clear vision of the final image.

Clear vision

Standing very close to our apple tree – or better nearly in the middle of the tree I was pointing my camera straigth to the sun. Just about 3 or 4 inches in front of my lens there were some beautiful white apple blossoms with a slight touch to red; they were strongly contrasting with the bright evening sky behind.

Not long ago I would have focused to the apple blossoms – but this probably wouldn’t have given me the image I wanted – I rather wished to paint with my camera with a very shallow depth of field – now I wanted the apple blossoms clearly out of focus. So I focused manually to infinity, i.e. to the horizon in the background and kept my aperture wide open at f2.8. As a result the closest apple blossoms were rather out of focus, but still recognisable – exactly what I wanted! I adjusted the shutter speed accordingly (set to 1/1250 s) in order not to get blown out highlights and still having some decent or at least minimal fine details even in the darkest shadows.

Even before pressing the shutter I could clearly see the final image I would achieve: In the foreground I wanted a lot of soft and dark shadows – out of focus – with a slight touch to green tones; in the centre of the (by the way square) image there should be the apple blossoms – still out of focus – they should be much brighter than the rest of the apple tree; and in the background I wanted the silhouette of the bright and warm evening sky in yellowish tones, well in focus – and carefully exposured without any blown out highlights.

Technical stuff

Here is some technical information about the gear I used and the exposure data:
Ricoh GR II, GR Lens f=18.3 mm 1:2.8. ISO 100, 1/1250 s, f2.8, no flash (of course – I am not a fan of flash), shot in DNG RAW format.

The original .jpg SOOC

This is the original image, SOOC (straight out of camera), converted in body from DNG RAW to .jpg – as a first copy and preview.

Original jpg, this serves me as a preview.

Basic corrections

After importing the DNG RAW in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom I started postprocessing the image.

My basic corrections in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom were as follows:

• Temperature set to 6500 K, in order to get that subtle greenish shadows I wanted,
• Lights and Whites set to -25 to give it a soft yellow sky,
• Saturation to -50. I love monochrome.

Brighten the apple blossom

Next I checked, if my vision of the bright apple blossom was achievable – and yes – (perfect – I love the dynamic range of my Ricoh GR II -) the tones were exactly how I wanted.

Corrections for the apple blossoms:

• Temperature to +5 to achieve an overall warm tone,
• Tint +50 to increase the red tones of the apple blossoms,
• Exposure to +1 – that was important to brighten the apple blossoms,
• Shadows to +100 (!) to get fine structured details in the shadows,
• Clarity and Saturation to +50 to get more “pop-up”.

Square

I like the square aspect ratio – it reminds me of my old film days, where I used medium format cameras and film – back in those old days I often shot square – I love it. So next let us mask the image, adjust the horizon and set the square format.

Perfect.

Eliminate disturbing elements …

Let’s cheat a little. I did not want those nasty disturbing leafs and foliage at the right margin of the image, so I corrected them in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom – or better I simply eliminated them using the repair tool.

No more disturbing leafes and foliage at the right margin of the image.

Sharpening

What about sharpening? Of course, but with the excellent lens quality of my small Ricoh GR II there is no real need to sharpen … and beside that: Shall I sharpen some out of focus apple blossoms? Nevertheless some sharpening was done, but really not much, just basic and minimal.

• Amount +25
• Details +25

Vignetting

A rather moderate vignetting was applied in order to give some depth and framing to the image, some kind of guide for my eyes to stay within the image.

• Amount -15 gives some slightly darker edges.

That’s all.

Saved to .jpg and exported.

And here is the final image.

I love it.

Final image.

Last question

And one last question at the end:

No, I am not going to ask you, if you like the image. But:

Why is today a very special day?
Today is my birthday.

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