Daily Archives: January 22, 2014

 

postmortem |pōstˈmôrtəm|noun(also postmortem examination )an examination of a dead body to determine the cause ofdeath.• 

 

an analysis or discussion of an event held soon after ithas occurred, esp. in order to determine why it was afailure: an election postmortem on why the party lost.

 

 

Though the term postmortem is usually thought of in forensic terms, for years I’ve used it for other purposes.  After every workshop during the GAPW years we held a Postmortem after each event to evaluate what went wrong, what went right,  and how to learn from the experience.

 

I would like to start a series of posts that are postmortems of images.  Let me share what I think went wrong, what went right, and what we can learn from the image and the exercise of taking it.

 

The image above, we will call “trees in snow”.

 

How it happened:  I was driving to dental appointment and was early, I always try to be early because the best shots appear when you are running late!!!  I saw the single large tree near the edge of the road and the other trees in the distance behind it.  With the light snow on the branches and the overcast light it just looked interesting to me.  By the time I knew I wanted to photograph it I was past it.  I went down the road and found a safe place to turn around and then went back past the shot and started back down my original path.  Since traffic was light I was able to drive slowly watching for the shot to appear out my drivers window and then drive slowly until I saw the “perspective” that I thought worked best.  I pulled off the road there and put on my hazard blinkers.  There was no safe place to get out and set up a tripod.  I knew it was going to have to be a handheld shot.

 

Setting up the shot:  My driver’s side rear view mirror was in the way so I pulled forward a few feet so I had a clear shot past the mirror.  I knew that I would need a longer lens so I put my 55-200 on my Fuji X-E2 camera body, I zoomed until I got the framing I wanted.  Since I was sitting in the car it was necessary to hand hold the shot.  I set my ISO at 1600 so I could have a fast enough shutter speed that along with the OIS (Optical Image Stabilization)  in the lens I could get a tack sharp image.   1/1600 sec;   f/9;   ISO 1600

 

 
Composition:  I positioned the camera so that the tree occupied the right hand side of the frame with the branches reaching back into the frame.  I was glad the sky was pretty dark and wasn’t drawing the eye away from the branches.  I thought at the time I wish the tree was on the left side of the frame reaching right, so I flipped the image in Photoshop below to see how it felt.  I think it works either way.

 

 

Final Analysis:  It was worth stopping, I like the monochrome simplicity but also the complexity of the branches and opposing tones. I’m happy with the shot, but not overwhelmed by it.  If I passed some similar situation I would still stop and give it try!

 

 Now the fun part, chime in with your thoughts!!  We can all learn from each other here!

 

Blessings,

 

the pilgrim