Campton Bog

My penultimate NH kayak paddle, unbeknownst to me. If I hadn’t moved, this would be a regular spot for me. There’s a pond and then the bog proper. This is the pond. In winter it freezes solid and smooth. Great to walk on when you’re wearing spikes. But in summer it’s a paddler’s heaven. On the opposite side of the dam is gorgeous little brook. Really a special place. The day I took this was perfect. Warm. Sunny. Peak color and clouds hanging about.

Specific Feedback Requested

I’ve processed this three times over the years. Does it look natural? It really was super bright and colorful.

Technical Details

Is this a composite: No
handheld in the kayak. Probably a CPL.

image

Lr for the initial raw processing which wasn’t much. I left things basically flat so I could adjust in Photoshop. There I did some masking to sculpt the light in the trees. Tamed highlights in the clouds. Some clarity added there, too. Lr for the crop because the right side had some dead trees that weren’t helping. A bit of distraction removal.

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Our Rainbow lorikeets might be a treat for you, but your autumn colour is such a treat for me. Rarely seen where I live. Our colour range is light green to dark green.

The colours are clean and crisp, but certainly looks natural to me. I like how the pond seems to meander round the bend.

This borders on psychedelic! I also don’t have autumn color where I live so it’s a treat to imagine myself there, gliding quietly through the water. The few times I’ve gone in search of storybook autumn color, the story was always, well, you should have been here last week – or last year.

Thanks @glennie & @Diane_Miller - while we do get lovely colors here, I miss the intense reds of New England. This pond is long and skinny because it’s made by damming a brook, so it does wend and wind quite a bit. My favorite type of waterway to explore. The enticement of the next curve.

Kris, I really like the square presentation on this image. The symmetry adds a nice sense of balance. I don’t see that you added any saturation, but it feels just a tad over to me in the leaves. Of course I wasn’t there and with the sunlight, maybe this is what it was. I really like what you did with the clouds, the pop quite nicely. This would look great as a large print on the wall.

Cheers,
David

Thanks @David_Bostock - I actually took the reds and possibly the blues saturation down in the Calibration panel in Lightroom and the saturation/vibrance sliders were left pretty low. I started with Adobe Neutral as a profile as well since the dynamic range is so large and I wanted to preserve as much shadow/highlight detail as I could. I don’t shoot with the GH3 anymore so didn’t bother with getting Tony to do a liner profile for me. The colors were really saturated IRL.

Glad the clouds don’t look too weird. They were really bright and lit up.

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@_Kris I think this is lovely. I actually like this sort of edit. I feel like it might be pushing the edge of natural, but it still feels natural to me. I find this especially true because I know how a place can look and when I get home the image just is lacking a little something that registered in the brain. I hope that makes sense. I think whatever you’ve done has probably better rendered the way you viewed the scene without going too far (in my opinion).

Thanks @karlag - it has punch for sure. The whole day was like this and I almost didn’t want to go home. Paddling days are coming (despite the snow we got last night) so you will have to put up with more kayaking shots soon! :smiley:

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A truly lovely fall afternoon, Kris, with it’s scattered clouds and near perfect reflection. Definitely an AAAAHHHH!

Thanks @Mark_Seaver - it was one of the finest days I’ve ever spent on the water. Getting antsy to get back out there, but it snowed a couple inches today so…