Today’s Post by Joe Farace
When people ask me where my roots are, I look down at my feet, and I see the roots of my soul grasping the earth. They are here… in the Southwest… I still live in New Mexico. —Rudolfo Anaya
If you haven’t already figured it out, I have an affection for New Mexico, Mary is always talking about moving out of state; she prefers Arizona but I’m allergic to temperatures higher that 120. I prefer New Mexico, especially, Albuquerque, where I made today’s featured image, at least the original JPEG file that’s shown at right…
You know how it is
You drive by something and say to yourself, “I’ve gotta make a photograph of that…some day but for some reason you never get around to it. Once upon a time, my friend photographer Don Feltner gave me a round wooden coin that looked like a “wooden nickel” except “tuit” was written on it. So since I had a round tuit, this photograph was going to be my round tuit shot but, of course you know there would be some twists and turns along the way.
A few years ago, when I was in Albuquerque with Mary, we were driving past this clothing store that had these mannequins standing outside and she told me, “you gotta take a picture of that.” When we drove by the store later in the day, the store was closed and all of the mannequins had been taken inside. But I persevered, so the next time we were in the Nob Hill area, we made a detour and the mannequins were outside but it was a very busy day with lots of pedestrian and automobile traffic. So Mary dropped me off and drove around the block while I tried to shoot.
In the time it took here to drive around the block, I managed to make just two shots, one in black and white for whoever knows what reason. The color image file is shown at above right and was made with an Olympus E-5 Four-thirds (not Micro Four-third but with the same size sensor) and Olympus 17mm f/1.8 lens. Exposure was 1/640 sec at f/9 and ISO 320, which seems a bit underexposed to me.
But it was only when we got back home to Colorado that I decided to re-imagine the image, by first leveling it a bit using Photoshop’s Transform tool. As I look at it now, I could have done a better job of composing the original image. Next I corrected for underexpose using a technique that I explain here. Then I used Topaz Lab’s Adjust plug-in to tweak to the finished image to achieve the effect that you see above.
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Along with photographer Barry Staver, Joe is co-author of Better Available Light Digital Photography with new copies are available from Amazon for $21.50 and used copies starting around five bucks.