Walk in the Forest Grove

Another day in Forest Grove since my car is broken and can't be fixed until tomorrow morning. Means more time visiting my twin though, so it's not all day. Oregon isn't that bad, and this area is super photogenic!

After lunch today, my sister and I went for a hike/walk out on this weirdly straight path. It was possibly the longest, straightest path I have possibly ever walked on. There was literally 1.5 miles of path that didn't curve at all. Very odd. But pretty though. The trees formed this nice archway over the path and was very picturesque.

I shot this on a telephoto lens at 140mm, which on a 1.6 crop is 210mm. So very telephoto. That's about a 3x or 4x magnification or something?

Anywho, I wanted to get everything is focus, so I shot at f11. This is much higher than I usually shoot, I tend to shoot really open. But today that was different. I wanted sharpness for dayyysss.

Since I was shooting at f11 and ISO100, my shutter speed needed to be at 1/13th. That's much to slow for handheld, especially at 140mm. Even when it's on a tripod, the vibration created from the mirror flipping up blurs the image a bit. To counter this, I have a custom mode that has mirror lock up as a preset that I used. Mirror lock up means that the mirror flips up with the first shutter press, then the second press actually takes the photo. I used a shutter release to further steady the camera and get as sharp an image as possible.

Editing this image has taken me about 4 hours. I worked in short bursts while watching tutorials to get ideas of how to edit the image. I've combined tutorials for a bunch of different Ps techniques, but the image came out to look like it has been processed to have the vintage effect on it. The blacks aren't quite black and there's a strong blue tint to them. The highlights have a tint to them as well, and the over all tonal range of the photo has been compressed. There is also heavy vignetting and blurring around the edges.

I started to edit the image in Lr. I made a lot of adjustments on the tone curve that basically darkened the exposure and highlights, while lightening the blacks and leaving the shadows completely alone. I also raised the red highlights and lowered the red shadows. This removed red from the shadows and added it to the highlights. I added green across the board and removed blue. Finally, I raised the clarity a bit and that was the extent of Lr adjustments.

Now to Ps where the fun began. I first added a curves layer to brighten the shadows a bit and bring blow out the highlights just a bit. Next, I added a gradient map adjustment layer with a radial gradient on the layer mask that only applied it to the center of the image. This darkened the shadows and increased the mid tone contrast in those areas. After taking care of the tones, I made a stamp visible layer, set it to overlay, then applied a lens blur to it to make a nice glow effect. I then made a layer mask and just applied it to the trees and ground. This made those areas more dramatic and surreal. Next was a high pass sharpening layer followed by a levels adjustment to raise the shadows a bit. Finally, I blurred the edges of the photo.

It still didn't look quite right though. Something was off. I added another gradient map to the lower part of the image to darken the pavement. I then made a stamp visible layer, set it to overlay and adjusted the blend if adjust so that it only affected the highlights of the layers below. Finally, I added a very complex levels adjustment layer. For this I added reds to the mid tones, added green to the highlights, and added a bunch of blue to the shadows and mid tones. This layer was what gave the image that vintage, color toned look.

I'm happy with the photo, but I feel like it's missing something. Just can't put my finger on it. Maybe I just took it at the wrong time of day. Huh...

See you tomorrow! Hopefully from the island!