timeimmortal

Yet another picture from Grace’s grandparents’ yard. I wasn’t outside for all that long when I went picture-taking the first day we were there, but in that time I managed to grab several shots I’m fairly pleased with. Here’s another of them.

The only negative I really find in this image is that it once again underscores just how desperately I need to get my hands on a graduated neutral density filter — the sky behind the trees is, unfortunately, rather washed out. On the other hand, Lightroom 2 did an exceptional job of reducing the chromatic aberration along the highlight edges, and highlight recovery managed to bring some additional fine detail out of the wash.

This birdbath was situated in the (unused and somewhat grown-in) front yard of the house, and was flanked by several tall trees which wouldn’t surprise if they turned out to be a century old (if not older). Actually, the front yard was pretty dark overall (cast into shadow by said trees), and I found that I had to dial up the ISO a fair bit to get steady shots.

Edit-wise, apart from what I mentioned above, I applied the calibration/Punch preset that I favour, and also switched from ACR 3.1 to ACR 4.4 (ACR stands for Adobe Camera Raw, the technology Adobe applications use to interpret RAW-format photographs). A few shadow adjustments brought out some nice contrast in the shot, and a bit of noise reduction smoothed out the grain from the higher ISO setting.