Bird, Flooded Fields. Central Valley, California. January 23, 2011. © Copyright G Dan Mitchell – all rights reserved.
A bird wades in a flooded Central Valley winter field in front of a receding line of power poles and some farm buildings on a levee.
This is (yet another!) photograph of the flooded fields along a country road near the Cosumnes River in California’s Central Valley. I was shooting almost directly into the sun through remaining fog and haze near the middle of a winter day. The building sits on a levee between the fields and the bird was kind enough to pose for me while I made the photograph.
Given one of the subjects subject that I’ve been discussing at the blog during the past few days, it seems reasonable to point out that this image involved significant work during the post-processing phase – what we used to refer to as “the darkroom,” but which we now refer to as “photoshop.” I used a variety of techniques to push this image towards what I had in mind – a very high key interpretation that I hope evokes the sensation of looking into a backlit hazy atmosphere that is so bright that you can barely look at it. (In fact, it was very much like this when I made the photograph – as you can see it required a 1/1000 second exposure at f/8 and ISO 100. That’s bright!) In general I brought the overall brightness up to nearly pure white in the lightest portions of the image, and I employed some other techniques to lower the amount of contrast in the sky yet keep the building, the poles, and the levee fairly dark. Although all of this was accomplished in the “digital darkroom,” all of the processes are equivalent to those that might have been applied by photographers working in the traditional darkroom.
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Thanks, Steve. I felt that BW would work for these rather spare landscapes.
Dan
This is a great series Dan; love the B&W in these scenes.
I really didn’t care for this imagine at first glance. After giving it a second look I really like the way it works and reminds me of images from the dust bowl era. I guess it’s the building on the levee and the feeling of emptiness I get from the sky and the water. Well done!
Jim, thanks for sharing that – and I’m glad that your interest in the photo increased rather than decreased after a second look!
I know that these photographs from my foggy day in the central valley don’t have the same sort of obvious impact that some of the more typical landscape stuff of mine has, and I appreciate the fact that you took the time to try to understand it.
Dan