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Andrew Williams's picture

A Rainy Afternoon in Lancaster County

We drove to Lancaster County to have dinner at the Shady Maple Smorgasbord to celebrate my brother-in-law's birthday Tuesday. It was drizzling and foggy the entire way. Susan was driving (I'm not allowed to drive the new VW Tiguan) so I was photographing through the windshield and side window as is my want. These may show that I don't get out much these days (which is true) and just shoot any old thing. This is not new, but since I switched to digital the affliction has gotten far more severe since there is no differential cost to shooting more.

I shot both images with my Nikon D810 and a 35-70 AF zoom. I think I shot both of these at 70mm. I shot at 1/500 second (It was a moving vehicle), but I would have to check the EXIF data to know more. I'm guessing f/4.5, which is wide open at 70 mm.

These are quick and dirty edits.

Both images were straightened using the DxO Labs Viewpoint 3 filter in Photoshop. In the first one, I leveled the horizon and this made the tree apparently vertically correct. In the second one, I used the roadsigns' supports to define the vertical since there was nothing else to reference.

I increased the saturation and adjusted the contrast exactly the same way using Topaz's Adjust AI inside Photoshop, which I like a lot and find very useful. The image with the car also was processed using Topaz's Denoise AI and Sharpen AI. I can't see that this made much of a difference in this case. Maybe you can.

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1 Comment

I really like the first image such a simple image. Yet enough layers to draw the eye in. I really think it would benefit from you having gotten out of the car. I would also try a black and white fog has this ten fancy to bring out soft tones in fog. But nevertheless the first shot is my favourite out of the two keep it up.