10/27/2009
Trees of Flame Framing Lighthouse: Cape May
You may get tired of this Lighthouse, but I seem to have shot it from all angles on this trip. I could not resist these very bright trees and finding an angle that would frame the the lighthouse. I got down low and used the flip out lcd of the H50 to compose the shot.
Sony DSC H50 at 35mm equivalent. F5.6 @ 1/400 @ ISO 100. Programmed Auto.
Recovery in Lightroom for the sky. A bit of fill light to pick up the leaves in the tree and the textures of the tree trunks. Blackpoint to the right to intensify the image. Added Clarity and Vibrance and Sharpen Landscapes preset. Finally I went in with the selective HLS tools and increased the luminance of the red of the leaves.
And, for contrast, here is a shot with more lighthouse and less trees, taken from the same spot by zooming in.
Tighter Frame of Flame
This is at 120mm equivalent. For this shot I used Program Shift on the H50 (easy to do as it is one of the on screen options accessible without opening the menu system) to select the smallest aperture and increase depth of field to keep both foreground and the lighthouse in focus. It received very similar treatment in Lightroom.
So what do you think. Wide frame or tight?
From Cape May 10/09
Hey Stephen–
I like both shots, but the tight one feels just a touch claustrophobic to me, so I give the edge to the wider one. Did you try any of the tighter framing with the lighthouse not falling between the trunks?
About those trees–they are one of my favorite species down here. I usually hear them called Black Gum, but Black Tupelo may be a better name. The are one of the earliest and most spectacular constituents of our fall leaf color show.
Also, charmingly, their scientific name means, “water nymph of the woods,” according to Wikipedia. This squares with their habit of growing along wet edges, as in your shot. More info here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyssa_sylvatica
Sorry I didn’t make it over to Cape May this year…see you soon in Texas!
Jeff
Thanks for the additional info on the trees. I actually was wondering what they were. We have Black Tupelo in a few swamps up here too, but the trees I have seen here are much bigger.
NICE NICE NICE
Great shots! No particular favorite, like them both!