Sorry I'm so late with this one.  It's been a long day.

Today's image is one that took a lot of work to get right.  I think I tried 10-20 variations on the original shot to get the right composition.  I then played around/adjusted/sought feedback/readjusted/played around some more over subsequent months to get things where I am happy.  All of those changes are quite subtle and none involved vast uses of processsing tricks (which I'm not good enough to get away with anyway).

Anyway, this is an image I took at the Arboretum last year, walking along one of the paths to the bog trail.  I saw a log lying next to the path with all these worm trails eaten into it.  When looked at in the right fashion, they reminded me of pictographs.  All the work described above was over how to best emphasize that aspect, getting depth of field uniform, contrast deep enough to differentiate the lighter bits, etc.

Now I just need to learn to read what nature has written.

Natural PictographI was walking along the Bog Trail in the Arboretum when I spotted an old, fallen tree by the side of the path. I was intrigued by the worm trails in the wood and bark, which reminded me of oriental characters or pictograph. In order to emphasize this impression, I composed the shot to exclude any background, and combined using a long lens (to flatten the image) and a large depth of field (to keep everything in the image sharp) to get the photo seen here.

I haven't posted a fountain photo for a while, so here we go.  This is from Paris and is the only black fountain (or set of statues or individual statues, for that matter) that I've ever seen.  That makes it much harder to get the exposure correct since the camera reads black as gray.  Underexpose to keep things dark (and, if you're shooting digital, check your replay and histogram to make sure you have things where you want them).

You may notice, also, that things seem a bit misty/foggy.  That all comes from the fountain itself.

I don't feel like figuring out which photo to post today, so instead I'll just let everyone know that I've uploaded my best photos from CONvergence 2014.  They can be found here:  http://www.pavellephoto.com/p340150416