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The Grass, Greener
26 July 2021
We've seen this ground cover here and there and lamented when its luscious green blades turned brown and withered away. But we've never met. We no more know its name than it knows ours.
Grass. Olympus E-PL1 with 14-42mm II R kit lens at 18mm (36mm equivalent), f5.6, 1/160 second and ISO 200. Processed in Nik Collection 4.1 Silver Efex after Adobe Camera Raw.
It looks like a solution to the invasive grass that haunts every yard around here. Thick enough to prevent the stuff from rooting, that is.
But it's also melodic. And as we stood in front of this growth, which was growing in the front yard of a home in St. Francis Wood, we immediately thought we'd like to see it in black and white.
So we snapped a photo straight on at as wide an angle as would fill the frame with the undulating waves of grass. Later, back at the bunker, we ran it through the new version of the Nik Collection by DxO, which has significantly improved the performance and responsiveness of Nik Silver Efex.
As you can see in the screen shot above, we tweaked the tonality of the High Structure preset to bring out the pattern.
Whenever we resized an image in Photoshop for display here, we sharpen it. But in this case, the sharpening detracted from the smooth flow of the blades of grass in the black-and-white image. So we skipped that step.
We liked the effect. It was what we had imagined when we came across the original scene.
But, you know, the grass is always greener on the other side of Portola.
So we just had to whip up a color version of the image for you, too. And if that doesn't make you want to get out your niblick and hack through the links to be rewarded with a peaty scotch in the clubhouse afterwards, well, just scroll back up to the black-and-white version.