Yosemite Creek - 2015
Ann had been looking at (and working on) some old images, so I thought I’d take a mental break from brief writing this week and do the same. I picked a year - 2015 - and picked a dated but unnamed folder that had a bunch of images in it. I decided to dive in and see what was there and then pick a single image to work on. Let’s see what Yosemite NP had to offer me this week.
I wound up not actually developing the image that day because, being Yosemite, I had a hard time selecting which image I wanted to develop. And given that it was a break from work (and I bill hourly), I didn’t want to spend too much time on non-billable activities during the work day. I just needed a break to clear my brain from what I’d been focused on so it had to be a short break. I narrowed down the selection to about 5 images to choose from and returned the next day (again, when I needed a break from writing) to pick one from those. Working on
I wound up selecting an image that, while not a composition per se, has some abstract qualities to it. I remember standing on a bridge looking down onto the the rocky bed of Yosemite Creek, and then raising my focus a bit to the water flowing just above it. The question that crossed my mind was how does one photograph the flashes of color that one sees reflected on water surfaces. So that’s what I was aiming for.
I had several frames from which to choose from because, whenever I photograph water, the textures vary so much that it’s worth while spending some time to both find the shutter speed that recreates the water as one feels it, and then to find a pattern that grabs your eye. I had quickly found the right shutter speed, so all that was left was to make a handful of water patterns from which to choose from. None were perfect when viewed at full frame, but the one below had the most elegant of the water patterns, and a hint at a wide range of colors. A slight crop from the top eliminated a bright wave that was bisected by the edge of the frame and leave me with a framing I couldn’t complain about.
While I knew the most important part of the image was going to be within the water patterns, I started first with the rocks at the bottom of the frame. Like almost all of my abstract images, I try to keep one foot in reality for people to understand that this is a photograph “of” something and that they too could see it if they are attentive. So I worked on making the rocks clearly a creek bed, but to not make it so the eye was drawn towards the bottom of the frame. While I wanted a nice “base” for the image, I didn’t want it taking away from the water.
Then I went to work on the upper part of the frame. I confess that it took very little effort to bring out what I had seen and was hoping for with the image.
With barely a touch on the saturation slider, the colors I’d seen while photographing and that were embedded in the raw file jumped to life. I’d mentioned in a recent post that raw files tend to appear to lack contrast. That is because they’re capable of handling wide contrast situations and, when you have that, those images look normal. If you’re presented with a less than high-contrast situation, the files look flat. The same is true with how raw files often handle colors. They often come across as muted a bit in raw. So a touch, often a very small touch, is all that is needed to bring the vibrancy of the colors back. Sometimes that happens when you adjust the contrast, sometimes that happens by controlling the saturation. The hard part with working with color saturation (or contrast for that matter) in photographs is that it’s easy to go too far and suddenly everything doesn’t look natural. You know those kinds of photographs - so hyper-exaggerated they are devoid of a sense of reality. Sometimes beautiful, but . . . . Here, while the water surface looks unreal (it’s seen over the duration of the exposure time, not the naked eye, so of course it’s not how we see things), I can assure you it’s not unnatural. The colors were there, and intense, when I was standing on the bridge, which is why I was so fascinated by them and why I wanted to photograph them.
Once I got the color right, I lightened the highlights a bit and deepened the shadows a bit. And that was it.
One of the things I like about this image is that it represents one of the primary reasons why I photograph. Photography and its processes allows one to explore the world in ways that the normal eye by itself cannot. Call it visual playing, call it exploring, call it experimenting - but that’s what I love about photography. Yes, it can “capture” what you see, but it can also (and does) see differently than the eye. Once you understand those photographic characteristics, doors open to see the world in new ways, and to make images that reflect those new ways of seeing. Just like this image.