There is More, So Much More

This Abandoned Home was shown to me by my daughter in Harrismith recently. It's doors were wide open and we wondered who lived in this beautiful home with it's delicate choice of colours. As yet I don't have a wide angle for my Nikon D600 other than a manual focus 24mm f2.8 but on this particular day I was travelling light and had the 35mm f1.8 DX lens with me. We were rather pressed for time so I used the 35mm lens and I did some spraying and praying to be stitched later - bokeh panorama or the Brenizer technique style. Below is a single frame taken with the 35mm DX lens which does reveal vignetting even though using the new Adobe Camera Raw 7.2 with a high +75 vignetting removal setting was applied. After downsizing 32 images the Spherical photomerge option in Photoshop CS6 gave me the best result and the curved lines don't bother me too much and I actually prefer this look. There were some fixes to be made where some joins had jagged lines and I have found the free transform tool in warp mode most useful. Some adjustments were made to lighten the distant doorway and darken the entrance hall while some Nik Color Efex filters were used too. The final image that was created would be the equivalent of a 17mm F1.2 view calculated using Brett Maxwell's calculator. The 35mm DX worked admirably in this situation and as for now it will remain in the kit bag despite it's vignetting shortcomings.

I would be honest in saying that I did not pre-visualise this image other than that the arch with it's pastel hues caught my attention. Whilst working on the image the distant doorway and the light in the other room kept drawing my eye. What started out as a quick trip to a neighbouring town to fetch my daughter from school turned out to be a most pleasant surprise on so many levels. We had a great time together and as for me I just realised there truly is more and so much more waiting out there for us. There are so many new thresholds waiting to be crossed and so many rooms full of treasures waiting to be explored.