It’s all in the P.O.V.

Bench (1/250 sec at f/6.3 at 16mm, ISO 100)

Today’s blog is going to be quick and dirty since I’ve been running around the last few days in preparation for my trip to Tulum, Mexico.   I want to remind everyone to check out Kajsa’s blog about travel preparation HERE (we’re giving away a few free gifts too).  I’ve chatted a bit on this blog about changing your perspective.   Point of view (P.O.V.) can make or break images.  I think today’s image is case in point.  This type of shot, if taken straight on, just doesn’t work.  I shot this image last week in Chicago after we received six inches of new snow.   Now, everyone shoots park benches, so nothing new here, but I really like the way the trees embraced this particular bench.  I sat there looking at the setting and an image popped into my head.   I immediately realized in order to make this work, or even come close to working, it was going to require me to lay flat on my back to frame it right.  I proceeded to get down in the deep, freshly fallen snow, and laid on my back with my 16-35mm on the camera.  I had the focal length set at 16mm and slowly slid toward the bench stopping every six inches or so to shoot.  The 16mm provided a nice optical effect by slowly bending the trees inward toward the bench. I tried to balance the shot so that the bench was the center point and the frame was as symmetrical as possible. I took some final shots, and later that day worked on the image in Lightroom.  Once in Lightroom I cropped in on the image keeping the bench as the center element; then I added a small vignette to help keep our focus on this lonely bench.  The last thing I did to the image was add a slight selenium tone to add to the feeling of the cold winter morning.  So there you have it.  Now, the next time you shoot an old familiar object consider a new P.O.V…….you might suprise yourself.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 12th, 2010 at 7:56 am. It is filed under Adobe Lightroom, contest, General, Style and tagged with photo contest, pov. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.