Through the Greenway / July 25, 2023 by Todd Henson

I’ve not been out photographing much lately, nor have I worked much on my photography, both because of the hot and humid weather and due to various family concerns that have occupied my time and thoughts. But I have a great desire to continue regularly creating something to show here each week. Though I initially felt completely uninspired and struggled to find anything in my back catalog to work on or show, I eventually found myself gravitating to a series of photos of palm fronds from a trip to the United States Botanic Garden back in 2009. If you’ve followed my work long enough you may know I enjoy finding images I can flip and stitch together into interesting patterns, and that’s exactly what I’ve done here. I hope you enjoy the results.

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More to Explore

Obscura

The Well of Segais

Playground of the Fae

The Gateway to Fairyland

A Bend in the Road

Through the Greenway

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Bridge Over the Channel / September 15, 2020 by Todd Henson

Bridge Over the Channel: The Francis Case Memorial Bridge over the Washington Channel — *Bridge Over the Channel*: The Francis Case Memorial Bridge over the Washington Channel

This photo came about during a trip into Washington, DC, to view the cherry blossoms early one spring. My brother and I had travelled into DC many times over the years viewing and photographing cherry blossoms, and so for this trip we decided to look for cherry blossoms in an area we’d yet to explore, East Potomac Park. The park is located on a finger of land surrounded by the Potomac River and the Washington Channel, and is just outside the typical circuit route popular with most cherry blossom viewers.

You have to pass under a couple bridges to get to the majority of the park, and one of those is the Francis Case Memorial Bridge, over which 395 spans from Virginia into DC. I often find bridges, and particularly their underside, fascinating, and this one was no different. So I paused briefly and composed some photographs before moving on to the rest of the park and the cherry blossoms.

I like the symmetry you often find with bridges. And with this one I was drawn to the slightly lit undersides of the metal beams, lit from sunlight reflected from the water below. I did lighten them further in post-processing to help bring out some of what I’d been drawn to, the light and shadow, the patterns of the parallel lines occasionally crossed by the horizontal supports. And I liked the variety of tones to the stones of the support columns.

A lesson that was reinforced this day is that even when you go out with a specific goal in mind, such as photographing cherry blossoms, always keep your eyes open to other possibilities. You never know what you may find.

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Before & After: Dawn Reflections of the Washington Monument / August 4, 2020 by Todd Henson

A before & after look at Dawn Reflections of the Washington Monument — A before & after look at *Dawn Reflections of the Washington Monument*

Today we’ll look at a set of before and after images comparing the raw capture straight out of the camera with the final image after all post-processing. I’ll also show some of the steps that went into transforming the image from one to the other.

When shooting in a camera’s proprietary raw format the end result out of the camera is a digital negative that requires some level of processing to convert it to an image suitable for viewing or printing. Some of these steps can be very simple, resulting in very little changes to the look of the image. And others can drastically alter the look, better capturing the mood of the scene.

One of the first decisions I typically make in post-processing is whether or not to crop the image. Sometimes I don’t, preferring to keep the framing out of the camera. Other times I prefer a different aspect ratio, or I want to crop out sections that, to me, detract from the image. In this case I chose to crop out the stone sidewalk at the bottom of the frame, creating a more wide angle view.

You can click on most of the images for a larger view.

This is the original image, before cropping and post-processing.

This is the original image after cropping. I decided I didn’t like the stone sidewalk at the bottom of the frame.

I could have stopped right there, after cropping. I like that version of the photo. The blue light of early dawn created a great look. But I wanted something a little more dramatic. And the next step to getting there was adjusting the white balance and various other image-wide settings.

When I first started photographing with a digital camera I didn’t have a firm grasp of white balance so I almost always set it to auto and left it alone in post-processing. But slowly, over time, I grew to appreciate the power of adjusting the white balance settings. It can correct color casts or add some nice drama by shifting the colors just a bit. That’s one of the major steps I took to alter the look of this photo.

These were the white balance and basic settings before I adjusted anything.

Here’s what it looked like after my initial white balance and basic adjustments.

Next I looked at drawing more attention to the bright monument in the middle. That meant applying a couple graduated neutral density filters to the sky, gradually darkening it as it reached the top of the frame. I also applied a filter to upper left corner. That side of the frame was slightly brighter than the right corner and I wanted to balance them out a bit.

This is the first of three graduated neutral density filters I applied. The pink shows the area of effect. The adjustments applied to this filter area are on the right.

The first graduated neutral density filter wasn’t enough for me, so I added a second to the top of the sky. I didn’t adjust quite as many settings with this filter.

Finally, the left corner of the sky was a bit brighter than the right, so I added a graduated neutral density filter there to darken it just a bit, trying to balance it with the right corner.

I chose to brighten the monument to draw a bit more attention to it. To do this I masked out the monument and its reflection, increasing its exposure and tweaking several other adjustments. You can see the adjustments I applied to the mask on the right side of the image.

Here I used an adjustment brush to select the monument and reflection. I then brightened them and applied a few other adjustments, which you can see to the right.

Finally, to really push the eye towards the center of the frame, I applied a vignette around the edges of the frame. In this case it was a reasonably strong vignette, but even a slight vignette can help drawn the eye inward, if that’s your intent. Click on the images below to cycle back and forth between the version without the vignette and that with. It’s easier to see the difference that way.

Without Vignette

With Vignette

And so we arrive at the final image.

Click the image below to swap back and forth between the cropped before image and the after image. The changes made quite a difference, didn’t they?

BEFORE

This is the version before major editing. All I've done is crop, straighten, and perspective correction.

AFTER

This is the final version after all post-processing.

What do you think? Would you have done anything differently? Thinking back there are a couple things I might have tried if I could go back to that day:

It might have been interesting to shoot a longer exposure, see if I could still the water a bit more, perhaps creating a more perfect reflection, though I do also like the movement in this reflection which was mostly caused by ducks swimming in the water.
If I’d owned a taller tripod at the time I might have raised it to its tallest setting. Doing that perhaps I could have included the entire reflection of the monument in the water.