f/8 Bracketed -2/0/+2
Walking along the Taehwa River Park the other morning I found myself enchanted by the bamboo forest that runs along side the river. Maybe it was the soft music or the first warm and bright day in Ulsan in a long time. At any rate I came out of this walk more relaxed and with a few nice shots as well.
The Shot: The image that I had in mind was that of a dark forest with a path leading to a mysterious place. I that I have achieved this effect by playing around with the contrast levels and adjusting the shadows a bit. I wanted to keep the sun in the frams to give that “something on the other side” look.
The inspiration for this shot came from one of Trey Ratcliff’s shots from Kyoto.
The Location: This is certainly not Kyoto but it works for me. This is in fact the bamboo forest in the new Taehwa River Grand Park in Ulsan, South Korea. The park is located along the Taehwa River in Ulsan and is one of the newer green spaces in the city. The bamboo forest stretches along the river for at least 1 km with a bike path on the outside to keep that peaceful feeling inside the forest.
The Post-processing: For this it was fairly simple. I took 3 bracketed shots and ran them through photomatix. What I wanted to achieve was to keep the green of the bamboo but enhance the contrast of the shadows. In order for me to achieve that I needed to tweak it a bit in photoshop. I adjusted the levels and warmed the image up with a warming filter. I used “curves” to bring the shadows of the trees out an little more .
Here are a few other shots from the day
