Since taking a job at a bar my schedule has been less than ideal. I sleep when everyone else is awake, I work when everyone else is asleep, and, until recently, spent the day passing time until work.
Even my new passion for photography was pigeon-holed into my asinine schedule. I spent quite a few cold nights in the Charlestown Navy Yard and on the Charles River wondering why all the pictures I was taking were coming out so blurry (I've since discovered the importance of the tripod!) After a quick inventory my first few weeks of photos, I realized the majority were taken at night and of areas very close to home.
Some one day last week I decided to drastically alter my schedule and daily routine. I got up at 7am and headed to Jamaica Pond - one of those Boston locales that I had long ignored. It was a clear and cold morning when I arrived at the pond and I learned a very, very important lesson. When planning for your cold weather photo adventure, as you pack and prepare your camera, lenses, filters and another fancy doodads that I have yet to discover, do not neglect to pack appropriate clothing! I unfortunately had to cut my own little adventure short due to a misguided choice in leg wear.
I took quite a few shots but wasn't to excited about many of them. I did get a lot of practice with my camera's manual settings though - which will come in handy later I hope.
As for the photos, I did find one diamond in the rough. There is a small island with a few small trees on it right in the midst of the pond, and that was the subject of quite a few early shots. When reviewing the images I found this one; its not great, but there was some potential in it.
As you can see, its not exactly the most striking image. So I went ahead and did some basic editing. I don't have Photoshop or any other powerful editing tool, just iPhoto's basic tools - but in this case they proved to be more than enough.
I started out by cropping the image so that the island and the trees became the focus of the photo - since the water and background were kind of boring to begin with, it was no great loss. Once the island was enlarged I decided to tackle the next big problem - Exposure. For some reason I used a longer exposure time than necessary which made the picture look washed out. Rather than play with all the levels, I used the effects feature in iPhoto's editing menu. I played around with the B&W and Sepia effects, but wasn't overly wowed by them. I settled on using the "Boost Color" effect and ratcheted it up 5 levels. It gave the image a nice balance somewhere in between the B&W and Sepia effects.
The new color made the photo seem old and slightly otherworldly. A decided to run with that idea and kept toying with the effects menu. I went with blurred edges, and then moved it up 7 levels in order to blur deep into the image - hoping for that ethereal feel. Leaving just the birds and the center island is sharp focus, the image gradually blurs outwards.
Lastly I opened up the "Adjust" menu and made some finishing touches by very, very slightly adjusting the exposure, saturation, noise, and sharpness levels.
When all was said and done I ended up with the final image below...
A drastic improvement in my opinion.
So from one early morning photo adventure I learned quite a bit. I discovered that researching the weather is just as important as researching your equipment. I learned that experimentation with the camera may not always net you great shots, but will provide great experience. And lastly I learned that sometimes a great photo can be hidden inside a less than spectacular one.
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