{"id":2599,"date":"2018-05-09T17:49:09","date_gmt":"2018-05-09T15:49:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/speckund.me\/?p=2599"},"modified":"2021-07-04T12:24:23","modified_gmt":"2021-07-04T10:24:23","slug":"favourite_1-no-one-loves-but-me","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/speckund.me\/w2\/favourite_1-no-one-loves-but-me\/","title":{"rendered":"favourite #1. no one loves – but me"},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/em><\/p>\n

As I mentioned in one of my latest articles<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Clear vision<\/h2>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Technical stuff<\/h2>\n

Here is some technical information about the gear I used and the exposure data:
\nRicoh 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.<\/p>\n

The original .jpg SOOC<\/h2>\n

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

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\nOriginal jpg, this serves me as a preview.<\/p>\n

Basic corrections<\/h2>\n

After importing the DNG RAW in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom<\/a> I started postprocessing the image.<\/p>\n

My basic corrections in Adobe Photoshop Lightroom were as follows:<\/p>\n

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