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jeanmariebrun

She sees the light (B&W)

An early morning of June, in the garden, after heavy rain overnight.

An early morning of June, in the garden, after heavy rain overnight.
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X-T20

Aperture f/5.6 ISO 500 Shutter 1/170 Focal Length 5600/100

upload_date

Dec, 2020

Views

805

Likes

+47

Awards

Contender in the Visual Poetry Project

Top Shot Award 22

Winner in B&W Macro Photo Challenge

Winner in Playing With Light Photo Challenge

Top Choice

+15

Superb Composition

Peer Award

Outstanding Creativity

Magnificent Capture

Absolute Masterpiece

Virtuoso

Emotions

Impressed

Happy

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Behind The Lens

Location

This photo was taken in my garden, in Phnom Penh (Cambodia). It's just a small garden, but it's already a privilege to still have few trees and a bit of greenery around the house in this fast growing city! And despite it's small, if you look well, you can discover such beautiful things that Nature gives us to contemplate... And photography is about "looking well", isn't it?

Time

This was shot in the morning at around half past eight... late enough to have a some direct sunlight (in a urban environment), still early enough to have a fairly good quality of light.

Lighting

This picture is taken with natural light only. Morning light. At sunrise, because of the urban environment and constructions around, there's not yet direct sunlight on the garden. So there's just a quite short time-window with a still nice and quite warm light. As one can guess from the sun ray sparkling in the water droplet, the light was rather coming from behind the subject. The foliage partly filtered the light and made it softer, except on a few spot like that droplet.

Equipment

I shot with Fujifilm XT-20 and the Fujinon XF-56mm F1.2 + Fujifim MCEX-11. Camera was hand held. No flash. Despite of the low aperture (f/16), I think because of close-up focus distance and use of the MCEX-11 extension tube, the depth of field is still very shallow (bit too shallow, maybe), but I was blessed with a really beautiful bokeh on the background.

Inspiration

This shot was taken in early June which is the beginning of rainy season in Cambodia. There was quite heavy rain during the night before, but in the morning, a nice shiny sunlight on the garden. My attention was first drawn by the beautiful water drops left by the rain on the stems and leaves, shining and glittering in the morning light. It was enough for me to decide to steal a bit of time, grab my camera and capture the simple beauty of this moment. Along this tiny journey in the garden "microcosmos", I noticed weaver ants moving around on the stems, I tried my best to get an interesting composition combining the ants and the sparkles in the water droplets. And this is it.

Editing

I processed the raw file in LightRoom. I have to say that I never learned post-processing. I have a very empirical approach of photo editing in LightRoom. I fumble with the various adjustments until I get something that I find satisfying. For this shot: first it was cropped (the original picture was in landscape orientation, I cropped on both right and left sides). Some basic adjustments were made to increase a the contrast, as well as some color-selective adjustments before to convert to black & white. I tried to sharpen the image a bit and slightly reduce noise. Then a twist of vignetting to darken a bit the corner and get more attention on the subject.

In my camera bag

FujiFilm XT-20 is my only camera at the moment. This picture was shot at home so I had everything near at hand, but otherwise, the choice of lenses to carry with me will depend on the pictures I think I may take. I have two prime lenses I really love which are the the XF-16mm-F1.4-R-WR for landscape and the XF-56mm F1.2 that I used here. Then I have two zoom lens for more versatility a XC-16-50mm and a XF55-200mm... A tripod and ND filter if I plan some long exposure landscape.

Feedback

Well, as an humble amateur and mainly self-taught photographer, I am not qualified to give any lessons, even less to get into technical recommendations. The only encouragements I can give to my peers amateur photographers is to practice, try new things in shooting and post processing, and try again, and improve progressively... and most of all, take pleasure to see the beauty around us and hopefully to capture it in your pictures!

See more amazing photos, follow jeanmariebrun

jeanmariebrun

jeanmariebrun

She sees the light (B&W)

An early morning of June, in the garden, after heavy rain overnight.

Behind The Lens

See more amazing photos, follow jeanmariebrun

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