PLAY January - Nikon 50mm f/1.4G: Winter Landscape with Donkeys
There are actually four donkeys in this image but you'll need good eyesight to spot more than two of them!
This is for my PLAY project - you can read more about it in my profile - where I'll be using a different prime lens for each month of the year: in January it's the Nikon 50mm f/1.4G on a full-frame camera (the D610 today).
@jetr Thank you Joan: I will do some colour work this year - mostly in my 365 album I think - but I really enjoy making B&W images so that will continue to be my main focus I guess.
@frankhymus I would have done better to have shot at f/8 for better DoF but I was trying to isolate the big tree from the background... with only limited success ;-((
Obviously I have poor eyesight because I'm not seeing the other two donkeys. As always, you've come up with an interesting yearly theme. I look forward to the learning done through seeing your pictures.
@jborrases@lyndemc@jamibann@scotthouston@skstein@joysabin I'll put you all out of your misery: the third donkey is just to the left (as you look at the image) of the white one but mostly hidden by the tree. Four the fourth one, look to the left of that same tree and you will see three lumps - they're tree stumps; below the leftmost stump is another 'lump'... that's the fourth donkey! Thanks for all your comments.
@vignouse Are you into allowing post processing help? A layer of Gaussian Blur with low opacity masked in only over the stuff you require blurred (and then feathered heavily) will often work nicely. Of course, Lightroom with the Adjustment Brush/ Lower Sharpening could work, but I find it quite ham-fisted in comparison, and not nearly as flexible as PS layers. As well as it being a total CPU hog.
@frankhymus Frank, I'm into accepting any advice that will help to improve my photography! With this image, I realised in processing that I wanted some of the background detail that I had tried to blur out in camera so after development and some tonal adjustments, I sharpened the image to recover as much background detail as possible. That left the foreground tree 'too' sharp so yes, I applied a 10 pixel 30% gaussian blur in PS which I feathered out using a layer mask. In retrospect, as I've already said, I would have made a different decision in camera, but this is precisely the sort of learning that I'm looking for when I set out on my projects. Hope you're having a great time in Australia...
@vignouse Not too bad a time in Australia, thanks for asking, It is not what you call a total fun time, being with my ailing mother. At 92 she still thinks she can do the things she did even 5 years ago, and she just can't. And her memory ia really failing, although i don't mention it to her, just roll with the flow. But she will not, definitely and adamantly won't move out of her house to a retirement community. I've given up trying, so has my sister. But it is hard keeping an even keel.
@vignouse Impressed and ever so slightly intimidated. ;-) I might join you for part of the journey. A year's out of the question - I'd need to buy nine prime lenses!
@jasperc Or rent them... but I don't know how much lens rental costs so it might not be feasible. Otherwise, you could use each lens more than once in the year... which is effectively what I shall do as I shall be using full-frame and some APS-C equivalents. Your work will inspire me whatever you choose to do.
