The wooden planks of a damaged fence are bleached and have acquired a silvery sheen from long exposure to light and weather. In the white light around noon on a hot, sunny day, the planks look almost metallic, strongly reflecting the sun.
The OM-D is a great camera with enormous dynamic range. It could capture the scene without highlight clipping in the RAW file, but when I looked at the image, I could not feel anything but disappointment. This was not what I had seen or, better, what I remembered to have seen.
The result of my work in Lightroom better reflects my memories. It’s not perfect, but perfection can’t be achieved without an output medium of comparable dynamic range anyway. The only thing I could do was to play with dodging and burning, and to use a slightly different color temperature on the planks than on the surrounding. Don’t know if it works for you, but for me it does.
The Song of the Day is “White Light, White Heat” by The Velvet Underground. Hear it on YouTube.
April (2013-08-10)
To "form the equivalent" is my current mantra. Every now and then it happens in-camera with minimal post-processing, but that's rare. Then the question becomes one of close observation: What did I really see? Not, "Would it look better if I did this?" 🙂 Your image is easy for me to enter and explore. I'm not the least distracted by wondering "How did he do that?" Instead, I wonder at what you saw.
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