The sound of country music (and a few hits from across musical genres) was ringing out as LOCASH performed at the USDA’s Great American Farmers Market Wednesday on the National Mall after a welcome from several members of the president’s departmental cabinet.
Selecting an image
What makes an image great? How do photographers or editors (and/or publishers) select quality images out of tens or hundreds versus the 36 or so one would get on a roll of film? There was one image in particular from Sunday’s concert with Big & Rich that stood out during the review and editing process. (There was minor editing in Adobe Lightroom for this image.)
Why this image? For starters, it has near-perfect focus. Modern mirrorless cameras have autofocus now that we could only dream of back in the DSLR days with eye/subject detection. When the aperture is wide open at f/2.8 (in order to get the background blurred with nice bokeh), it means the area that is in tack-sharp focus is not very big.
There’s a reason back in the day, the old adage for photojournalists was f/8 and be there. You knew most everything within your viewfinder would be relatively sharp (or at least sharp enough for newsprint) from edge to edge.
Next — and one of the things that’s really cool — is Big Kenny’s sunglasses. The lenses are mirrored and it’s a chromatic shade of blue. So instead of just presenting in the image as a dark gray or black lens that absorbs all of the light around it, we can actually see something in the sunglasses inside the image — a tree. Here’s a Google Street View screenshot of the area performers on the main stage would’ve been looking toward.
This is an old image from 2013, but as long as trees haven’t moved, the tree(s) on the left are likely what is reflecting in the blue lenses since the photographer was positioned stage right for that song.
As for today’s article, here are a few reasons for the top photos that were picked out of a set with roughly 75 images.
- Image #2: The photographer was able to get the Department of Agriculture text in focus with Chris Lucas in the foreground and the band behind him.
- Image #5: The guitar player was in the foreground of this image with a colorful backdrop (blurry with bokeh) of the banners promoting the farmers market outside the USDA headquarters.
- Image #6 and Image #7: Although these weren’t selected for this reason alone — you can see tree reflections in Chris Lucas’ sunglasses (#6) and another tree is visible in the aviator shades worn by Preston Brust (#7). In Brust’s sunglasses you can also see one of the tents from either a sponsor of the market or a vendor. In fact, it was noted on Wednesday night that more than 1,500 vendors applied to be at the event.
Other sights from the National Mall
The region experienced a “thin veil of smoke” from Canadian wildfires on Wednesday, according to The Washington Post. However, that smoke and high clouds led to some amazing photo opportunities during golden hour (the hour preceding sunset).
The first image was processed in Adobe Lightroom. The second is a screenshot of the straight out of camera JPG image.
“What the hell is that smell???”
In other news, visitors were lined up in the United States Botanic Garden atrium for an opportunity to see a corpse flower in bloom. The odor was strong Tuesday evening, but by Wednesday evening much of the smell was contained to the greenhouse itself. More flowers are expected to bloom later this summer.
