Historically, landscape photography has been my main interest, but recently I dusted off my zoom lens, borrowed a friend's 40mm prime (64mm on my crop sensor), and went to a near by park. The landscape wasn't particularly interesting so to make the trip worth it I got out of my comfort zone and tried to make the most of the zoom lenses.
With landscapes I usually edit to make the photo as realistic as possible but With these photos I tried to be a little more creative with the editing.
The Dragonfly
With this dragonfly, I found the colors in the rock to be somewhat distracting from the bright blues and greens in the dragonfly so I decided to try something new for me (but by no means original) and put the background in greyscale. I also darkened the background and turned up the contrast. Together I aimed to maximize pop with the colors of the insect.
Photogenic Mushrooms
In this photo I wanted to draw the eye to texture of the mushroom rather than the color of the grass. By un-saturating the greens in the grass, I hoped to keep focus on just the mushroom
I aimed to achieve a similar effect in this photo by darkening the shadows and only allowing some of the grass to texture and color the background. Here I was really focused the peculiar shape of this mushroom cluster and again didn't want the viewer to be distracted.
Please let me know if you agree with my editing decisions and if you have any feedback I'd love to hear your take on things.
Thanks for reading!
