2010 - Week 26, Larger Depth of Field

The Missouri Farm
June 21, 2010 2:34 pm
Nikon D90, 18-105 3.5-5.6 VR @ 45mm
Manual, Pop Up Flash, ISO 320, SS 1/125, f/13
RAW, Spot Metering, AF-C, WB in Auto
Exposure Compensation -0.66 stops, Flash Compensation -1.66

This picture is important to me.

Not because it's portrays happy, content subjects - really, who could be happy on a humid, 100° day in full sun - never mind city kids who aren't used to being poked and pricked by corn stalks and hay stubble.

This picture is important to me because I wanted it to remember my childhood by.

There are so many memories in this photo, and I don't have a photo with my dad in these cornfields, so a picture of my dad with my own kids will fill that gap.

I remember walking from the house through these fields of corn and then another half mile or so to the creek to go swimming - by ourselves, no adults - and none of us knew how to swim!

I remember the summer we built the east-most grain bin, the thousands of little bolts and nuts we slid in and tightened, and how much fun it was to climb to the top and scramble about, or to go in and wallow in the cool grain - now the thought of that makes the bottom of my feet tingle.  But I loved harvest time - unloading wheat, beans & corn into those bins, climbing up into the wagon or grain truck and sliding down to the opening with the grain.  I didn't seem to mind the bugs and dirt back then.

I remember sorting and working cattle in the pen next to the hay barn. I was Dad's little helper. We broke my first 4H steer, Rags, in that pen. He was so wild we had to build a cage over him to keep him in, but was so tame in the end we let him roam the yard like a pet dog.  We had a milk cow for a while and I was the only one who could milk her when Dad couldn't be there, I remember pinning her tail between my hat and her flank so she wouldn't swat you during the milking.

I remember moving the cattle herd in & out of these fields.  It made us into a family of sprinters.  I remember the standoffs with Horns the cow (mother of Rags) and being rolled in the cockle burrs and stubble when I just couldn't get out of her way fast enough when she came after me.  I did stand my ground one time and clocked her over the head with a stick, but most of the time I just tried to stay out of her way.

I remember one of my most detested chores - pulling weeds by hand out of the soybean fields - YUCK! And one of my favorites, being the one who always got to drive the hay wagon because I was the weakest and couldn't throw a hay bale up on the wagon.  I remember just a few days when Dad would let me skip school to help disc the fields, he did all the spraying and planting, mowing and baling himself.

I could obviously go on for a long time about the memories that come back to me just by looking at this picture.  We moved here when I was just a bit older than the girls are now, so my most vibrant childhood memories are here.  Hopefully someday I'll sit down and write some more stories about those times.

I wanted to try a larger depth of field for this photo because the landscape was important to the meaning of the photo. I bumped up the ISO just a smidge, and then pushed the aperture as closed it would go until I reached what I wanted for a minimum shutter speed. Because it was almost mid-afternoon and I was getting some facial shadows, I popped up my flash, adding negative exposure compensation and then also lowering my flash compensation because I didn't need much flash to add a touch of light to their faces. I would have liked to have played around with some different focus points and maybe throw the leading corn a bit out of focus but have the house a bit sharper, but the girls were not interested in hanging out in the corn field while I played, and it was just a tad hot out there.



post-processing
I added a levels adjustment layer and mask of the upper sky, and slid the blacks in and mid-tones over to bring out the clouds and a bit of blue in the sky.