It isn’t often I get moody clouds while kayaking, so when these hung around I did my best to find something to put in the foreground. This is Nixon Creek. Hard to tell that right? That’s because there is a dam on it to make a rather large flowage as we call them in Wisconsin. Depending on the terrain, the creek widens and narrows as you paddle from the dam to its source. In this case, Nixon lake which I think is spring fed. To get there you have to paddle for a couple hours (at least, with no dawdling) and then go under the road in a huge culvert. The lake is undeveloped and has campsites similar to the ones on the flowage itself. On this trip I didn’t make it to the lake because the creek narrows and fills with lilypads from many species. They are thick and difficult to paddle through so I called it quits and went back. By then the clouds burned off and I was doubly glad I stopped for shots like this and a few others before it became all bluebird skies.
Specific Feedback Requested
How does this work as a sense of place? Is it at all interesting or just kind of meh?
Kayaking photos are often about immersion for me and I was going for a feel of that here. Surrounded by water, snags, plants, dragonflies and birds. I have one with the beaver dam as a foreground element, but it dominates quite a bit, rather than showing the atmosphere of the place. The sky especially. Bah…I’m rambling.
Technical Details
Handheld with CPL
Lightroom for everything - basic management of tonalities and taming some highlights. I’ve begun using the blue saturation slider in the Calibration panel to get a vivid separation of colors and a lot of pop - +30 in this case. I also moved the green luminance slider in HSL up to +38 to get a lot of light into the treeline. 3 masks - sky overall, sky center, immediate foreground. Sky overall got a little dehaze, clarity & texture, noise reduction to keep things silky. Sky center was a radial gradient to pick up some warmth and add a touch of exposure. Foreground linear gradient got some dehaze to remove reflections further. A little sharpening and texture but no clarity since it already has plenty of contrast. A slight vignette.