About the Image(s)

Details: Nikon Z8 with NIKKOR 16??“80 mm f/2.8 ??“ 4E; 1/15 sec at f/6.3, ISO 400

How I did it: I took this last May in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. It was an attempt to do something different with an overly photographed subject. The cabin window reflects the barn situated behind it on the hill.

It was a very rainy day, with several potential lighting issues including window glare and hotspots on the other side of the window created by chinks in the logs.

I tried to frame the photo in alignment with the window frame itself, giving me a very short depth of field, which created challenges in 1) lines of the window weren’t very straight and 2) little fuzzy in the foreground.

I looked at this in both color and black and white. The color version was more about capturing the feeling of a rainy, spring day and rustic life, while the black and white was more about the nostalgia.

Using Photoshop I straightened and cropped, and then did some tweaks to the exposure and contrast. For the color version, there was also a small adjustment to the temp, and some sharpening to the frame on the far right. For the BW version I applied a High Contrast Red Filter and then lightly burned some of the highlights and midtones along the windows.

I am looking for suggestions and comments on the updated image, as well as impressions regarding color or black and white for telling the story.