Covered Bridge & Vineyard in Autumn Colors

Equipment Used: Nikon D750, 24-120mm f4 lense, 35mm f1.8 lense, SB-700 Speedlight & Vanguard Abeo Plus tripod

This fall I had a request from a client to gather images of a covered bridge and vineyard to finish out their order. When I thought the fall leaves were in prime color, I traveled down to Madison County to their well known covered bridges and stopped at the closest one. I arrived at Hogback covered bridge when it was just starting to get light which allowed me to get the glow of the sun as it peaked over the nearby hills.

I figured the creek below the bridge would be a great angle so I put on my waders and traveled down to the middle of the creek. There I put my D750 on the tripod and waited for the sun’s glow on the bridge and nearby trees. I had the camera in manual mode at f9 and a shutter speed ranging from 1/20 to 1/40 sec. VR and autofocus were shut off on the lense and ISO was at 100. I put the camera in self timer mode to reduce camera shake from pushing the shutter button.

When I started to shoot, I noticed the leaves below in the water so decided to include them in the image and was able to improve their look with a bit of light from the SB-700.

I than traveled to a vineyard, asked permission to go take pictures and started shooting. I changed the ISO to 200 and shot in aperture priority handheld.

Processing started in Capture NX-D by changing the white balance to shade and picture control to nature-landscape. Adjustments to the exposure compensation, contrast and saturation sliders were made to create a better colored image. Because there was a wide range of tones in the images, I decided to create HDR images as well on some of them. I copied the original file and then adjusted the exposure compensation. EasyHDR was used to create the HDR images.

Once in PSE 11, I first cloned out unwanted objects such as a broken tree limb in the water that looked out of place. I straightened and cropped the image after that. The final step involved the high pass filter to sharpen the image.

The trip was a success as the client loved the images I provided them and I was very pleased as well with how the Hogback covered bridge turned out underneath the glow of the fall sunshine.

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