Joe Tucker Cemetery, Helena, AL

Joe Tucker Cemetery, Helena, AL

Here is a perfect example of seeing an image in my head, but not being able to reproduce that faithfully, either due to a lack of skill in the field or in post. When I came across this cemetery (adjacent to the park with the geese), I saw the long shadows cast in front of the tombstones and thought I could make use of that hard, directional light the sun was giving me. I envisioned in my mind's eye a black and white image emphasizing the dark shadows on the diagonal. The first thing that went wrong is the sky. In exposing for those shadows, the sky is completely blown out on the right side. It distracts the eye. Perhaps if I had exposed for the sky I would have been able to pull out the details in post-processing. The next thing that went wrong is in the black and white conversion. I used the channel mixer, as I usually do for this, but I've never felt comfortable with it. I decomposed the image to see the RGB channels independently, and there was something I liked about each, but didn't know how to mix them optimally. I ended up with mostly the green channel. The last thing I'm disappointed with is my use of curves. I tried to boost the contrast between the shadows and the grass, but I may have overdone it. And in doing so, I was hurting my already-blown-out sky. This would be a good candidate for a layer mask to apply the curve only to the lower part of the image, but I'm not comfortable with that at all yet, especially since all the tutorials I can find are for Photoshop, and all I can afford is the GIMP.

Three things went wrong:

(1) Incorrect exposure. I should bracket my exposures more, and always take at least some frames exposed for the highlights to see if I can extract some shadow detail later. Eventually I may want a graduated neutral density filter for situations like this.

(2) Poor use of channel mixer. Although I know how to use it technically, I'm still unsure of how to use it aesthetically. This will only come with practice and evaluation--doing it different ways then comparing.

(3) Poor use of curves and no use of masks. I really need to learn how to properly and effectively use layer masks in GIMP. This image may be a good one to come back to for practice.