While stuck inside during the historic snow storm that hit my area recently, I started going back through some older images to revisit them with the capabilities of the newest image processing software.
Water lilies glow in the soft light at the end of the day.The above image is one of the very first digital images I ever made, way back in 2002. It was taken with a brand-new Nikon D1x and an original-model Nikkor 300 f/4 autofocus lens. It was this lens that taught me that while Nikon had maintained the same lens mount on its cameras for 50 years, that didn’t mean old lenses would work well with their newer bodies. In this case, the lens would autofocus in about the time it took for you to go home, make a sandwich, and return to your shoot. It would focus just fine on my Nikon F4 film camera, but not at all well on the D1x. Fortunately, water lilies don’t tend to move very much, so I was able to capture this image without too much trouble.
Back when I shot this image, I processed the raw file in Nikon Capture and did pretty much all the post-processing in Photoshop (I forget what version I was using back then). Today, I was able to do everything with Lightroom CC, quickly and easily.
Compared to today’s cameras, this is a pretty low-resolution file (the D1x was a 6 megapixel camera, and this is a 4×5 crop out of that 2×3 image). However, it is sharp and full of detail and makes a wonderful 16×20-inch print.
Want to see this image on your wall? All my work is for sale in either unsigned, open editions or by contacting me for signed, limited editions.
