photobyjohnbo

Cellpic Sunday – Driftwood

The Crocodile.

Emerald Isle, North Carolina.

On a cool and blustery day in January 2024, Lynn and I donned warm coats and walked on the beach near the condo we rented on Emerald Isle. I didn’t want to be encumbered by my Nikon, especially since keeping my hands in my pockets would be much more comfortable. Any photos would be courtesy of my Samsung S23U.

I captured a few images that morning, some shared in earlier Cellpic Sunday posts. As we walked along a pathway, I glanced toward the ocean and saw a crocodile. Looking more closely, I smiled at myself for mistaking a piece of driftwood for a crocodile.

About the image: After downloading it into Adobe Lightroom Classic, I processed the DNG file created in the S23U’s Pro mode twice. The color version was first. After basic cropping and exposure adjustments, I sent it off to Luminar Neo for my usual tweaks in the Landscape tool and Accent AI.

Driftwood-1
Color image processed in Adobe Lightroom Classic and Luminar Neo.

After completing the image in Luminar Neo, I thought the moody sky and surging waves would be a good candidate for a black-and-white treatment. One advantage of my dual processing work with Lightroom and Neo is that the photo comes back from Neo as a TIF file. The file I send off to Neo is only modified by basic tweaks, so it is readily exported to Silver Efex Pro with minimal modifications of exposure and composition. Unless I want it to be different, the format of the monochrome image exactly matches the format of the final color version.

In Silver Efex Pro, I chose one of my favorite presets, Full Dynamic, Harsh. I tweaked some of the preset settings to my liking, added some film grain, and then decided to add a subtle blue tone to the image to suggest the coolness of the morning. I still glance at the photo and see the crocodile waiting for us to stroll by casually. For pixel-peepers, you can analyze and compare the two images in 2K HD on my Flickr site here.

I encourage fellow bloggers to create their own Cellpic Sunday posts. I never have a specific topic for this feature, and the only rules are that the photo must be captured with a cell phone, iPad, or another mobile device… If you have an image from a drone or even a dashcam, that’s also acceptable. The second rule is to link your challenge response to this post or leave a comment here with a link to your post in the comment. Oh, you don’t have to post it on a Sunday.

John Steiner

48 comments

  29. Very foreboding image, John. I half expect the camera to pan to the left to focus on a group of cops surrounding a washed-up body – shark attack or murder, we’ll find out…

    Reply

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