Drafting photos on Flickr

Draft Fest

243/365-Drafting... by GarenT Photography

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243/365-Drafting is car related, well NASCAR related but looks like ducks do it too! Drafting is when the front car breaks the airflow and it actually allows the cars right behind them to save horsepower and actually go faster then the car in the front can go, thus going behind someone can greatly benefit the car that follows!! And I think we as artists do too. I have been reading a lot of David duChemins stuff lately, his books, blogs, e-books, you name it! and its really sparked a lot of talk among some of us about vision, voice, creativity, and inspiration, which was part of the push towards the more descriptive narration of our thoughts, capture, and editing process that you might have seen lately in the DPS 365 group.

I read something David wrote recently that in order to stimulate the creative process we must both increase our "inputs" and then allow these ideas to incubate until they can be born into new creative streams or images. To increase our inputs he suggested many things including studying the masters and even other photographers work, reading and looking at anything that shows new aspects or traits of light, composition, or subjects outside our normal shooting list! Look at sculpture, architects, choreographers.Even having deep talks with other photographers can illuminate new ideas that you can add to your box of tools and raw materials to create that next great vision inspired photograph.

So, while I was initially drawn to these ducks because of the great lines they create as they swim, I originally was hoping for one duck by itself with the disturbed water trail behind him, but as I continued to fire away, it all came together for me. Its a perfect picture of where I(and maybe you?)am at as a photographer! I am following in the "draft" of those who have gone before me, even if it was only last week, and using their ideas, knowledge, techniques, discussions, and images to add to my arsenal of creative tools and making them my own my concocting my own mix of all these to create new and different photographs! For me this means taking pictures every single day, and always at least trying to come up with a creative photo, even if it falls on its face, learning what doesn't work is sometimes just as valuable as learning what does!! Its during the process of creating images that the creative ideas for new,and even better images is born by using all the raw materials in our creativity toolbox in a new fresh way!

That "vision" helped me as I brought the RAW capture into the processing realm. The original had a flatter color range in the water , so I wanted to brighten up the "wake" of new ideas behind the "learning" This can be done in several ways but I chose to push global clarity to +70, vibrance to 25 and then using the adjustment brush to paint clarity of -77 to the upper part of the image. Also, the large reflection you see is actually a big Home Depot sign(See I WAS working !!) and the orange looked really great but detracted from vision and feeling "I" was trying to get across in this image so I pulled down saturation for the orange and brown of the big sign so it would not distract from the ducks and the wake... I added a slight bit of vignetting to again, encourage your eyes to the main subject...I also did normal adjustment like bumping blacks,lowering exposure, as well as global and brushed sharpness adjustments

Draft by Jennifer Willenborg