September 17, 2009 - Slight reprieve in the rain

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f7.1

ISO 400

55mm

JPEG

The rains held off for a while, and the tree guys came out to make good on their promise. While it is not perfect, my yard looks a lot better now. And since it wasn't raining, they went ahead and cut down the last tree.

Since the ground was still wet and borderline soaked, they cut the tree up into pieces and used a rope to lower each part to the ground. This technique was also used to make sure nothing fell on the power lines going to my house, which were only a few feet away. It also allowed them to haul the trunk off in pieces instead of having to use the same logger truck from the day before (the owner told me he wasn't going to use that guy again).

To help properly illuminate this photo on such an overcast day, I used my dedicated flash. The camera was being fooled by the bright white sky, so I told it to over-compensate on the flash by one full stop. I thought this did a nice job of brightening up the photo without making it look unnatural.

This is a great example of why you shouldn't be afraid to use your flash in the middle of the day. Without it, the photos turned out much darker. Why? I was aiming up into the underside of the tree, and just 25 feet away was my dark brown house (which was acting more like a light sponge — soaking up the light).

Before using the flash, the tree and the tree cutter were much darker and lacked detail. With the flash, everything looks more like you would perceive it with your natural eye.