I will freely admit that I don’t really like to go out in the rain to shoot but when that’s what we have and it is foggy, and I haven’t been out with a camera for a few days, well, it’s that or nothing.

I seldom have anything but the most general expectation for what I will find, this morning it was ‘there will be fog’.  Sure enough, there was fog and it works well to separate subject from background.

I made a print of the image above and I was surprised at how well it works.  Part of the reason was the condition of the weather but another important factor was the software I used to sharpen the image.  For a variety of reasons a digital camera softens the image a bit and it makes all the difference to get the sharpness back and accentuate it some.  There are lots of ways of sharpening and the garden variety methods, in the hands of an expert, work very well.  I’m not an expert.  I have been using Pixel Genius’s most recent version of their sharpening software (PhotoKit Sharpener 2.0)  and it performs well beyond expectation.  One of its features is to produce an image that looks just lousy on the screen but works well as a print.  As it turns out, the process of printing introduces some softening too and their software accounts for that.  The image above used a different set of parameters for display on a monitor.

I was also pleased to get all the shots appropriately vertical.  I am forever tilting the camera one way or the other and then having to straighten the image in Photoshop or live with it.  Today all went well.

It’s really pretty funny when you think of it, but I was out with a couple of thousand dollars worth of equipment (camera, three lenses, good tripod, etc.) and one addition that saved the day  This was a plastic grocery bag I put over the camera as I was lining up the shot and leveling it.   This is not exactly in the same league as

For want of a nail the shoe was lost.
For want of a shoe the horse was lost.
For want of a horse the rider was lost.
For want of a rider the battle was lost.
For want of a battle the kingdom was lost.
And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

But it was essential that the camera and lens not get too wet.  The plastic bag came through.