at South Rodeo Beach

click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

As most of you know by now, the large photo at the top of my blog (((the banner photo))) becomes the lead photo for the next day -- it's intended to be sort of a "teaser", so you'll be sure to return.

But a couple of you have already mentioned that you liked this shot of the wet sand glistening in the sun.   Hey, thanks a lot -- I had a lot of fun shooting it.   I think I should have also shot a version of it with footprints walking through -- maybe I'll try that another day -- it'll give me a good excuse to go to the beach.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

Sand patterns like this always fascinate me.   Mother Nature can sure come up with some really interesting designs.



click photo for full-size image
photo by Donald Kinney

This photo is a sort of a review of the Histogram lesson on January 14.   Despite my best efforts to bring the high-values into range with Exposure Compensation while I was shooting, the high values were still totally blown-out, but I got them under control just a bit more by using the Recovery slider in CameraRAW.

Normally I don't use the Recovery slider because it usually wrecks all the other tones in the scene (((turns them into mud))) but in this case I was able to get away with using it.   Not that it completely cured the problem -- most of those high values are still blown-out, but now -- less of them are.



Above is the "before" Histogram -- this is the original RAW image from the camera.   Notice the tall spike on the right.



And above is the "after" Histogram -- still lots of blown-out whites, but less of them -- notice that the spike on the right isn't as tall.   Also a lot more tones "mid-range", as shown by that tall spike in the middle of the scale.


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