Winding away

Image Description

A couple of days ago I went out snowshoeing and decided to use features on my camera that I never use just because I’m weird that way. So I put the camera in the much-maligned P mode and made a few adjustments to exposure compensation to get the snow right and basically let the camera decide everything for the day. Occasionally I did alter aperture or ISO, but not much. Instead I used another feature to help me visualize compositions better. That was the in-camera aspect ratio options. This is one of them only slightly cropped more, but retaining the 16:9 proportions. It was an interesting way to show what ratio suits best and because the G9 doesn’t throw away pixels, I still had options in post. I also noticed that the auto wb worked better in P than it does in other modes, at least with this particular set of photos. Very weird and I’ll have to investigate further.

Another thing I did was shoot jpeg simultaneously, something I flat never do. Really it was to see how good a SOOC file would be. Not bad. I’m including it so you can compare. I didn’t adjust anything except a slight crop and sharpening. I shot using some in camera filters as well which mostly need jpegs to produce so that was another reason for the sidecar files. Those were sort of fun, but probably won’t stay in my toolbox for regular usage. I think varying aspect ratios on the field might. And P wasn’t bad when I dialed in changes that needed to be made, it freed me up in a way to concentrate on composition and framing. Anyway…I’ll shut up now. Here’s the jpeg -

Specific Feedback and Self-Critique

I have a few other compositions of this bit of trail, but I went with this one because of the balance in the trees and the uniformity of size. Other views with bigger trees upset the balance. I also deliberately kept the far horizon out so the trail became a stronger presence. Thoughts?

Technical Details

Handheld

Lr for all processing including the usual s-curve to bring up contrast, some texture and clarity, a bit of a crop and transform to correct geometry. Sharpening and a couple of distractions removed.