SimonTHgolfer
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LindsayNunez
February 14, 2018
Great photo! But how did you achieve this look? Was it done in post-processing?
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo was taken in the forest around the Blaxhall area of Suffolk, England. It's a superb location as the trees are planted in fairly uniform rows.Time
This image was taken at about 5am during one of my "dawn run" around my local area. I love this time of day as the light is at it finest and the stillness of the dawn hours add a lot to an image.Lighting
The lighting was all natural and the sun was just starting to peek over the horizon, but not enough to change the eerie feeling of the forest.Equipment
For this shot I used a Nikon D750 body with a 24-120mm f/4 lens. it was a hand held shot as I was walking along.Inspiration
I took this photo to be used as a basis for a digitally manipulated image of the forest. It had to be quite spooky looking from the beginning as that was the look I was going for.Editing
Indeed I did...!!! I processed the initial image from RAW then duplicated the image onto a second layer in Photoshop CC. I then linearly blurred the background layer and then used a opacity mask on the top layer to keep the ground sharp while allowing the trunks of the trees to be blurred.In my camera bag
I usually carry a ton of kit with me as I'm paranoid about missing a shot through leaving a lens at home. First things I grab is my dual harness with a Nikon D750 and Nikkor 24-120mm f/4 combo on one side and a Nikon D7000 and Nikkor 70-200mm f/2.8 combo on the other as it gives me a 35mm equivalent of 24-300mm. My bag has a Sigma 10-20mm f/4-5.6 in it for those wide landscapes and cramped indoors shots. There's also a Nikkor 50mm f/1.8 for any must-have bokeh shots and a Nikon TC-20E II teleconverter to give me that extra reach if I need it. A bunch of ND and GND filters, a tripod and an SB-600 speedlight top it off.Feedback
If you're trying to capture and process a shot like this this one thing you need to do is make sure your vertical lies are as vertical as you can get them. I know trees are organic and tend not to grow arrow-straight but try and find the straightest you can.