Shades Of Green Assignment Winner Bob Faucher

Congratulations to Bob Faucher for winning the Shades Of Green Assignment with his image, “Fox Creek.”

“This image was made along the Fox Creek in Yukon, Canada,” explains Faucher. “I was on the Klondike Highway out of Whitehorse on my way to Dawson. The highway follows Fox Creek for miles as it meanders its way north to join the Yukon River. It was a rainy, windy Spring afternoon. The skies were filled with low clouds. The valley and surrounding hillside forests were in early spring splendor.

“I chose to stop at a spot along the road with enough elevation above the creek valley to capture the expanse of green, the meandering creek and the clouds hanging in the distant mountains. To fit all those entities into my composition, but eliminate extraneous or distracting elements, I chose my medium telephoto zoom lens using a focal length toward the wider end of its range. I made a number of exposures at varying combinations of f-stops, ISO values and shutter speeds to be able to compensate for the wind and rain yielding an image where the trees were still, the reflections in the creek were sharp and the motion of the clouds was minimized to be able to capture their texture. The moving clouds varied in density requiring waiting periods to avoid hot spots in the image.

“My initial post-processing was in Adobe Camera Raw for global exposure correction, adding a small amount of overall contrast, applying a custom lens profile to minimize distortion, removal of chromatic aberrations and adding some preliminary sharpening to eliminate color aliasing artifacts associated with the Bayer CFA. The image was finished in Photoshop using adjustment layers and luminosity masks for local refinements in tone, saturation and contrast as well as a layer for content sharpening. The top of the image was then cropped to remove some of the expansive skies.”

Equipment & Setttings: Canon EOS 5DII; Canon EF28-70mm @ 40mm; Gitzo GT3541XLS tripod; Really Right Stuff BH-55; RAW capture; ƒ/11 @ 1/160 sec.; -0.67 EV; ISO 400; Auto Exposure; Evaluative metering; Auto WB.

See more of Bob Faucher’s photography at www.faucherphotography.com.

Each week, Outdoor Photographer features a new photo assignment to inspire photographers to get out and expand their creativity. Check out our current photography assignment and enter your best shots, and find inspiration from previous assignments here. Past assignment winners can be viewed on the OP Blog here.