The Nature of a Shot

Mother Nature has been having a field day here in California.  Our gorgeous days of perpetual sunshine and climbing temperatures have been replaced with cold, wet, dreariness.

And I LOVE it.

I am not a native of this ridiculous climate of sun, warmth and no rain for ten months of the year.  A part of me secretly rejoices when the Mother Nature decides to pull a fast one.  And send in the rain.

So the other day as the clouds grew darker and the breeze picked up and the temps grew chillier, I waited in hopeful anticipation.  And then it happened!  RAIN FELL FROM THE SKY.  For about 8 minutes.

My first response was to run through my backyard's wet grass in my bare feet, to twirl in circles as the drops fell from the heavens and then cart-wheel across the lawn. My California born and bred children, just stood there.  Dumb-founded.  And I'm pretty sure they were shocked by the CRAZY behavior of this wild weather. And not their mother's (ahem) crazy behavior.

But my second response was to grab my camera and take a few pictures of my littles. Sam, willing only to go out in this rain with an umbrella in hand, gave me this shot.  I love that it shows two natures: both his quiet, serious nature and the lovely, wet gift of Mother Nature.

(Aperture Priority, 1/125, f/3.5, 50 mm, ISO 200)

This is a SOOC (Straight Out Of the Camera) shot as I took it that rainy morning. And I thought I would show you the nature of my work flow and the steps I took to create the edited version below.

I try to minimize my editing and as often as possible, just take good pictures to begin with, but I have found that some simple editing can sometimes transform a decent shot into a delicious one.  

I use Photoshop CS4, primarily with Actions, for editing, and so opened this image to play with it.  I knew this would make a great Black and White image because of the strong contrasts of the washed out background and very dark umbrella.  So I ran these actions in Photoshop:

• Adjusted curves to lighten
  
• Powder Room to smooth skin and brighten eyes (Coffeeshop Free download)
  
• PW B & W @60% opacity, deleted burnt edge layer (PW Actions Free download)
  
• Flatten
  
• Touch of Dark/ Touch of Light) @70% opacity to darken umbrella (MCP Free download)
  
• Define This! @100% opacity to sharpen water drops on umbrella (PW Actions Free download)
  
• Flatten
• Cropped and slight rotate
  
• Resized for web
  

And that produced this image:

Nature sure has a way of changing things up. And I just love the results.