Dead turtle edited in HDR with high contrast

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Dead turtle edited in HDR with high contrast, a photo by Nicola Zingarelli on Flickr.

My vision of this image wasn't clear to me until the other night, when I thought that a 3 exposures HDR could give me an edge on the editing. Said that I created two virtual copies in Lightroom one at +2 and the other at -2 EV and put them together in Photomatix with the original one. I pushed the cursor to create the creepiest look I could and then returned to Lightroom for the final touch, with more contrast and clarity. The doubt is if I should have had more vignetting or not...

The silver plated fish

Is not silvery and you know it. The Cubera is red or copper colour but not silver. Thus, with a bit of work in Lightroom you can edit it in black & white and get the shinest result of them all. I think that this is a good looking fish in any colour, from any point of view and with most of the lights available, natural or artificials. I bet I had a spray of flash here as well but I cannot remember now. I like the edit of this image, it makes me love Lightroom more and more.

The work in progress

Sometimes, when I shoot I'm not sure of what I want to achieve, but when I see the image in Lightroom I start thinking about it and the ideas start flowing to my mind while I play with the software. Thus, there are other situations when by the moment I glue my eye to the visor that I know what I want to say, what the image means to me or what I can do with it during the editing process. 

This image, when it happened, it was quite clear, even though I understand it can give room to many different interpretations. The simple and plain idea was: a lonely man walking away from the camera in a sad and moody autumn’s afternoon. If you give it a deeper look, you will notice that at the end of the walk is not exactly clear what he will find. The trees are quite thick and apparently there’s no sign of another track going anywhere else. Is he about to get lost in the park or swallowed by the dark trees? This uncertainty probably adds a bit more of pathos to the frame, but the main thing, if we don’t want to get too far and clever in the interpretation is that is sad and moody. 

This is the key scheme of the shot but to achieve that I had to work on the best composition, even before the man arrived. I had the camera on the tripod because I was working on a slow shutter speed (1/4 sec) and had to wait until the man was a tad farther from me, right in the place where I wanted him to be. At home, later, I had to convert the shot to black and white, quite gloomy and blue, while it was originally a decent afternoon with the sun setting nicely.

Not every time I have the chance to think so much about a photo and to be able to explain it decently, as I hope I did here. Usually is my gut that keeps me pushing the shutter button, and the brain start working later, especially when I’m on the “reporter” mood. Every once in a while I will post some “image with a thought” and comment it for those willing to read about it.