Assignment 6: Landscape and Nature

Hark Lee

This photo is taken at Zephyr Cove, South Lake Tahoe, California. It was a day before full moon, so the moon was rising shortly before sunset. I lucked out with some lenticular clouds, which are a kind of high-altitude clouds that usually form near mountain ranges and become stable. Interestingly this particular day, the clouds were positioned just over the horizon leaving a clear strip of sky so that the moon can shine through.

It was a bit windy, so there were some waves and ripples on the water. Since I couldn't get clean reflections, I used a circular polarizer to remove glares on the front part of the water and to accentuate the part of the rocks under it. The pink-purple golden-hour-glow on the clouds created very smooth and colorful light and the textures of the clouds, rocks and trees were the main theme. I could find a composition that shows both symmetry and simplicity.

I used a 35mm wide angle lens on my medium format digital, approximately 28mm on a 35mm full-frame camera, along with a 2-stop soft neutral density graduated filter to get the right exposure. I chose f/13 in aperture priority mode to get enough DOF and avoid diffraction, ISO 100 for maximum image quality. The shutter speed was about 5 secs, which was okay since all the objects were very stable except for the water (which didn't matter since I was not interested in capturing any surface texture).

The RAW conversion was done with Adobe Camera Raw, basic curve adjustments were done in Photoshop.

Recommende d display settings : temperatur e = 5000K / gamma = 2.2 / luminance = 120 / gray background .