I continue my search along the streams of York County Maine, for the American Redspot…an so far elusive broadwinged damselfly that might or might not be found in York County. I want to see one. I have not. Yet.

The search, however, has taken me some interesting places. I feel compelled, when the road crosses any stream or river, to, if at all possible, park the car and climb down to the water. I am often surprised by what I find.

This is Branch Brook, which forms part of the water supply for the Village of Kennebunk, a mile or two upstream from the Water Works. It runs in a fairly deep and steep cut through most of the last part of its course, but where Wells Branch Road crosses it, you can, if you are careful, climb down to the mossy banks and the peat brown water.

This is one of those scenes that is very difficult to capture. The range of light is well beyond the ability of even the best digital sensors. Even traditional HDR techniques, in this kind of scene, too often result in a flat imitation…something very different than what the eye sees.

I started by dialing down the exposure compensation by one and one third stops (which, visually, brought the highlights in the water just in range), and letting the exposure system do its worst for the rest of the scene.

Then, in Lightroom, I brought up the shadows, toned down the highlights, shifted the backpoint to add depth, and finally added clarity and vibrance to give some life to the moss. Finally I used the Auto Color Temperature tool to remove a bit of the shadow blue. The result is about as close as I hope to come to the impression the scene would make if you were standing there.

I did try an sudo HDR treatment using Dynamic Photo HDR…and the result was interesting…with brighter greens and more open shadows…but it produced a different impression than I remembered.

Canon SX40HS. Program with iContrast and –4/3EV exposure compensation. 24mm equivalent field of view. f3.2 @ 1/30th @ ISO 200. Processed in Lightroom as above.