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Shadow
14 September 2023
We were walking around the Lexus to retrieve the mail when we noticed the shadow the Japanese maple was throwing on the garage's diffused pane. That's lovely, we thought as we returned to the business at hand.
Shadow. iPhone 6 Plus at f2.2, 1/209 second and ISO 32. Processed in Adobe Camera Raw.
But wait a minute, we said to ourselves. Take a photo.
We had our iPhone 6 Plus in our vest pocket so we pulled it out and tried to line up the shot. The wide angle was including too much of the garage, minimizing the shadow, so we got closer.
And the shadow disappeared.
It was only visible from a specific angle. OK, well, that's what post is for. Capture what you can and process until pleased.
So we took the shot and went back upstairs to take care of our other chores.
When we got around to editing it, we decided we liked the light reflecting off the trunk of the car and we also liked the light on the garage door rail in the top right corner. Probably because we recently spent some time rebuilding the garage door opener.
We straightened the verticals but left the horizontals alone because it was clear we were looking at the door from an angle.
The color rendering was fortuitous. We liked the contrast between the warm outdoor sunlight and the cool reflection in the dark garage.
And while the original didn't show any detail in the shadows, clicking Auto (even on a JPEG) brought it all out. We vetoed that, thought, pulling the Shadows slider back until it was submerged in darkness.
Later we wondered what a black-and-white version would look like, so we gave that a shot. We missed the warm/cool contrast, though. In fact, the monochrome version melted both images into each other, which is not what we wanted.
The rollovers above also include the camera JPEG for comparison. It's where we started from.
The shadow cast by the Japanese maple on the garage window seemed as artful as a Japanese painting. The light reflecting on the trunk of the Japanese car made an interesting counterpoint to it. Lovely indeed.
