Florida’s Myakka River State Park has many wonderful vistas. In the winter and early spring before the rains come, the grass is dry and brittle, a wonderful wheat color. This lonely tree in the river of grass is featured in the following landscape photograph.
Camera settings
ISO setting 100: There was plenty of light, so a low ISO setting was used to ensure a noise-free image.
Exposure compensation –1/3 EV: The image was underexposed slightly to saturate the colors.
Focal length 32mm: The photographer started with the widest focal length for the lens to include a lot of visual information and then zoomed in until he saw the composition he wanted.
Aperture f/20: A large depth of field revealed detail from the foreground to the distant trees.
Shutter speed: A speed of 1/60 of a second was fast enough to ensure a sharp image when handholding the camera. Canon’s excellent image stabilization also contributed to the sharpness of the image.
Composing the image
The tree is the center of interest in the image, so a vantage point was used that placed the tree on a power point according to the Rule of Thirds. A polarizing filter darkened the blue in the sky. The photographer also crouched down to place the horizon line below the middle of the image to draw attention to the beautiful sky.
Post processing
This image looked good as it came out of the camera. A little saturation was added to make the sky and wheat colors pop, and minimal cropping was done to tighten the composition.