Editing Landscape: A Winter Walkabout
Frank Shoemaker Marsh progressions; exercises in subtle post-processing.
Possibly vain attempts to craft silk purses from sows’ ears.
A good friend flogged me to get up and out of my lurk and breathe real air. Fear of Covid has kept me mostly trapped below deck for more than two years.
We went to the Frank Shoemaker Marsh in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA. The site is 160 acres of land containing nearly 50 acres of eastern saline wetlands.
I want to go back in spring. Now it is bleak midwinter. This year we ain’t got one—just bitter cold, windswept, brown, bare, and barren. We had only a trace of snow back in January and there is none in the forecast. That’s fine by me but not for the farmers.
TREE
I hate to be that guy who whines that there’s nothing to shoot. There is always something to shoot. I'm not much of a landscape guy, but I had my Sony A6400 with my fave walkabout 16–70mm so I worked to see past the bleak. Walking along a trail beside the frozen creek, I saw this leaning, curved tree framing the distance. I thought the tree helped keep focus on the horizon. I stopped, composed carefully in the camera, and made a single handheld exposure.
John Burrow wrote the above piece with which I very much agree.
I am a strong believer that no picture is finished until it is finished. I am an inveterate post processor. It’s harder to tell what I did here than I’d hoped. The SOOC render isn’t bad, but nearly monochrome. It was made at 1/500-sec, f/6.3, 21mm, ISO 100, handheld. The first basic edit was to get some gold into the dry brown grass, but global adjustments shifted the sky cyan, and anyway, I don’t like an empty sky.
I have a collection of “cloud negatives” I’ve shot over time, found one that suited the mood, and took it into Photoshop to do the sky replacement. I used to have to do the selections and edge refinement manually, but Photoshop introduced a super-nifty one-click Sky Replacement Tool that (some feel) makes it too easy. They’re probably right, but I try to limit it, use an appropriate sky (preferably my own), and let folks know so they don’t get mad.
Back in Lightroom, I made some more local adjustments to introduce what I hope is more character in the grass. I brushed in some reddish highlights. I am personally pleased with the final picture.
FOOTBRIDGE
This footbridge over the creek I felt might make a center of interest. I thought a slight crop and shift to the left was appropriate as it filled an otherwise blank spot with trees. I still thought the picture was boring, though, and tried making it look more desolate by “printing it down” and adding a threatening sky. I reduced the red in the grass and used a graduated mask to darken it some to draw your eye up to the bridge. I think it works.
The trail we took ended at this sheltered overlook where we had lunch. Since I was determined to take pitchers, I repeated my method. I thought the beaten path worked as a leading line up to the empty shelter, and on that note, I am sometimes asked why I often exclude humans from such pictures. In this case, I reasoned that it was cold and wind-chilly, there wasn’t a soul around except my buddy and me, so it made sense there would be no one in the overlook. (That’s my excuse, and I’m stickin’ to it.)
OVERLOOK
Again I added thin clouds and carefully cloned out the poles and wires on the ridgeline. I did more local manipulation in the foreground grasses to give them more color and character. I try never to forget to disclose that I do because many photographers hate it. It’s not “real.” They feel fooled.
I counter that if I were painting this scene, I would leave out the poles and wires. I am not a shoot-it-as-it-lies photographer, not a strict realist. Were I shooting for news, I would leave everything as the agencies demand, but this is far from journalism. I admit, it ain’t “fine art” (goodness knows), but if I don’t want distracting poles and wires in the background, I think it’s my choice to remove them. I just always try to tell you.
FOOTBRIDGE reprise
Strolling back down the trail was this different angle on the footbridge. This shot, I think, has the least interesting SOOC render, flat and uninspiring. Punching it up with minimal slider work in Lightroom helped, and overall that is not bad as-is.
I still felt the first edit was lacking something indefinable. I tried the threatening sky but walked it back a little. I thought I had introduced too much red in the dry grass, so I walked it back, too. If you manage to enlarge it, you’ll see there’s a group of waterfowl taking a meeting on the ice under the bridge. Do you ever wonder how their feet stand it?
We were out for two hours, during which I made only these four exposures. I was deliberate, no burst shooting, just careful composing in the finder, watching my spirit level, trying to get it as right as possible to make only one exposure. Slowing down is good. These are not earth-shaking fine-art gallery-quality landscapes, but I think they’re kinda pretty and restful. I am not and never have been an artist, but I am a craftsperson.
There is always something to shoot.
I sincerely hope you enjoyed! Thanks for looking.
(And yes, I hate how Medium has savaged the formatting! They know.)
