Light Reveals the Moss, originally uploaded by jjvornov.
This image took some time to do and was probably one of the first in which I really needed to take advantage of non-destructive editing with layers.
I converted from RAW with Capture NX and then moved to Photoshop for selective processing. I ended up fighting with an area of white plastic at the very top of the mound of dirt. It was close to blown out and nearly posterized. I stripped away all of the work I had done in Photoshop simply by making all of the layers except for the background invisible and saw that there wasn’t enough depth in that area in the image that had been exported from Capture NX as a TIFF.
I reopened the RAW file in Capture NX and retraced my steps until I found where I had made that area a little to “hot”. It was easy since every change was adjustable and could be hidden or revealed.
After re-exporting as a TIFF, I copied the improved image into the Photoshop file, substituting the new version for the old. It was then easy to turn the adjustment layers back on and change whatever I needed due to any changes in the new background image.
I’m not completely happy with the image because of focus depth of field. I was shooting with the 24mm f2.8 at an aperture of f/6.7. I thought at the time of capture that both the moss and the lit area of shrub would both be in focus, but it turns out that the shrub is quite blurred. I applied selective unsharp mask to the shrub to make it more equal in sharpness to the moss/dirt pile. Close inspection reveals quickly that focus point is not optimal.
I’d try to catch the image again tomorrow morning, but it was an unusual lighting effect. The beam of light was actually created by the sun reflecting off of a window on the front of my house. The scene is in shadow with the sun actually in front and to the left of the scene. This accidental arrangement is one of the factors that makes it work- there’s not too much of a contrast range because the scene is generally in shadow except for a focused, reflected bit of sunshine from the early am sun. However, I’m thinking that one could easily recreate this with an off camera flash and some light restricting snoot on the flash. Possibly with an orange-yellow gel for the selective warmth.
Another issue that I’ve been struggling with and have improved somewhat is the value change that happens when I shrink the image for the web. Contrast goes up and shadows get blocked up. So I’m now adjusting at least levels on images after resizing to my standard 1000 pixel wide web jpegs. If I make those a bit on the light size, all of the Flickr sizes look like pretty good representations of the image.