New Life

WHAT

This is a budding new leaf of a Crow's Nest fern taken at O'Reilley's National Park which is located in the Gold Coast Hinterland. The fern was growing beside a stream which led to a waterfall, which had actually been the intended photography target of the day.

WHY

It was a very sunny day, which as it turned out, pretty much ruined any chance of capturing a decent shot of the waterfall itself: the bright sunlight caused areas of the waterfall in direct sunlight to be overexposed while parts shaded by the surrounding rainforest were too dark. Even taking bracketed shots didn't really help much. I'm sure there would have been a way to still get a nice photo in these conditions, but it was beyond my level of experience at this stage.

In the end, the above photo is the only decent shot I got out of the trip down there but I was happy with it. I've always loved macro style photography and would have loved a macro lens to use at the time but budget constraints have thus far prevented this purchase!

HOW

This leaf was one of several new ones which were beginning to uncurl their way upwards. It was a relative dark location with a few small rays of sunshine able to penetrate the rainforest canopy. This meant I had to increase the ISO setting on my camera to increase the light sensitivity of the camera's sensor in the available light. I think I cranked it up to about ISO 500.

I didn't want to use fill flash as this would have lit up the entire frond and not achieved the desired effect. I also didn't use the macro setting on the camera as it kept wanting to use the flash due to the low light.

I got my friend to hold some of the other new fronds away from my target frond while I snapped away using a low aperture setting and tried to hold the camera still. I also switched off autofocus and manually focused the lens myself.

It wasn't until I got home and looked at this image on the computer screen that I thought it had some potential- many of the other shots I'd taken of this frond were either blurred or so poorly lit that they weren't even worth 'rescuing' in photoshop.

POST PRODUCTION

I increased the vibrance slightly to reflect the intense green colour of the plant and also upped the clarity to get as much detail as possible. I increased the contrast and 'blacks' settings to make the background as black as possible to make the frond stand out. I also cropped the original image for the same reason.

Personally, I like a lot of detail (ie. clarity) in my shots and I nearly always increase this setting in photoshop rather than decrease it because I prefer the sharp look to the softer, dreamy look at the other end of the sliding scale.