Before and After #2: Ava

I haven't done this in several months, but I thought I'd share another before-and-after shot. This picture of Ava shows her standing on the driveway that leads up to the Richardson house atop Marye's Heights in Fredericksburg, VA.

It's overexposed to a great degree, so I backed off the exposure overall by about a half stop. The sunlit side on the right side of her neck and chest were overexposed as well, so I used an adjustment brush to burn in those areas, but not too much. Adding a vignette darkened her ears too much, so I dodged her ears with another adjustment brush (it's hard to make out since it's such a small area in the picture). Last of all, I cloned out her red leash and its shadow, which wasn't hard to do but it was time-consuming.

And I encountered the memory problem that other Lightroom users have run into when placing more than 10 cloned spots on one picture:. I had to exit out of Lightroom to free up memory. It's somewhat annoying, and I've read it hasn't been fixed in Lightroom 4 yet, either.

Note also that I'm working with an Adobe DNG file: I had to convert it from a Nikon NEF raw file to Adobe DNG because Lightroom 3.6 (the version I use) doesn't support D600 RAW files and never will. (I also didn't want to install Nikon's own software because that would add another step in my workflow.)  Adobe stopped supporting my version months ago, so I have no choice but to upgrade to LR 4 (and Windows 7). Which brings up the problem of software companies always playing catch-up when new cameras are introduced with their particular RAW files if that's what you like to shoot. If I had shot JPEG, no problem.

Ava and Daisy at the Richardson House, Fredericksburg, VA

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 70-200mm VR zoom and SB-800 flash; shutter-priority, shutter speed set to 1/500 second at f/5 at ISO 100; slow-sync; auto white balance; processed in Lightroom and DxO FilmPack 3.)

Ava near the Sunken Road, Fredericksburg, VA

During my weekend at Greyhounds Rock Fredericksburg (GRF) in Virginia, I had a couple of hours free on Sunday afternoon to do a session. My customer had contacted me to ask a question about doing a session Greyhounds in Gettysburg (GIG) next year, and when I mentioned that I was going to be in Fredericksburg attending the event we arranged to hook up for an hour or so to photograph her two Greyhounds. She actually drove a couple of hours from her home in Maryland to meet me -- I'm still stunned that someone would do this. So I had better not screw this up.

Before we flew out to Virginia I was mulling over where would be a nice location to shoot and still be close to the hotel hosting GRF. I didn't really think the ponds adjacent to the hotel was picturesque enough. My friends suggested the Sunken Road a couple of miles to the east near downtown Fredericksburg. It was a great suggestion.

If you don't know your Civil War history, the Sunken Road (I didn't before I watched Ken Burns' documentary The Civil War), which runs parallel to a stone wall, is the site where, in December 1862,  Confederate troops under Brigadier General T. R. R. Cobb and General James Longstreet fought off numerous charges by Union soldiers in their attempts to take Marye's Heights, which overlook Fredericksburg. It ended being a disaster for the bluecoats, and ultimately led to the resignation of Union General Ambrose Burnside as head of the Army of the Potomac. Such was the slaughter of the Union troops that General Robert E. Lee of the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia commented during the battle, "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."

Although the sun was still somewhat high above the horizon, it was settling to the west, so the lighting was spectacular: low enough angle, nice long shadows, highlights not overly harsh. I took some photos of Ava and Daisy along the Sunken Road, and then we decided to walk up a driveway that led to a house atop a hill. After passing through a gate at the beginning of the driveway Ava stopped, turned, and looked to her left to see what was going on back on the Sunken Road.

I digitally removed the leash and its shadow, brought down the exposure, increased the Recovery slider to 100 to restore highlights I'd blown out, played with tone curves a bit to add more contrast, and added a vignette. I had a good time photographing these two; I'll share a photo of Daisy in a future post.

(Shot with the Nikon D600 using the 70-200mm VR zoom at 70mm; aperture-priority, with aperture set to f/2.8; camera chose shutter speed of 1/500 second at ISO 200; center-weighted metered; auto white balance; shot in RAW, converted to DNG format using Adobe DNG converter, and imported into  Lightroom.)