This image of Filoli’s beautiful garden walk was taken on March 2 – a few weeks before Spring officially arrived.
Category: Filoli
Here’s an initial monochrome version of the Camperdown Elm photo from my walk at Filoli a couple of weeks ago. Handheld shot with my Nikon D600.
For this version, I used Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2 do to a black and white conversion, darkening the lawn area up front and adding a bit of color to the highlights.
The “bones” of this tree are so beautiful – and the morning light that morning at Filoli was just right to light it up.
I headed out this morning to Filoli – the beautiful estate and gardens in Woodside. This time of year, Filoli is known for its daffodils – and other bulb plantings.
I had my Nikon D600 in hand – which was just back from Nikon USA service having had its sensor replaced. This was a costly repair – for what I thought was a defect in the new camera that should have been fixed under warranty. But that’s another story. I wanted to get back out into the field with it – and see how it performed.
As I was walking Filoli, the light down this lawn area toward the distant tree – a Camperdown Elm – was especially beautiful. As I had done in Havana, I had the D600 in auto-everything – shooting in P mode with auto-ISO, auto-focus, etc. The camera opted to capture this image that I composed at 85mm at 1/800 at f/7.1 and ISO 1600.
Out of the camera, the image looked good – but it was a bit “flat” – with not much contrast between the light and dark areas. That’s what good cameras do – but the images often look a bit boring as a result.
Over the last couple of days, I became acquainted with some of the post-processing techniques of Aaron Nace. Not sure why I hadn’t come across him before – as he’s a master of Photoshop technique. But I hadn’t. One of his free tutorial videos was especially interesting to me – and I used some of his technique in post-processing this image – with the goal of making its tonal range much more interesting to the eye. I really like the result.
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My Touch the Sky post earlier today of the Pulgas Water Temple drew me back into the other shots I took last September at Filioli.
This is another Canon PowerShot S95 image – single shot this time – post-processed in Nik’s Silver Efex Pro 2.
Filoli is such an amazing place for photographers. Such texture, beautiful flowers and foliage. It doesn’t get much better than this! Be sure to go when you can!
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