Tag: lake dora

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Contemplation

At the park that I shot the boathouse, I happened to walk by this bench on the way out to the lake edge you can see in the background.

As ordinary as a park bench may seem, it is a holding station for taking in the scenery around you. A park bench can help you work through problems, change your mood or become a stage for making memories. The way that I wanted to photograph this with the lake in the background was purely for contemplation. Imagine, for a moment that if you lost something important to you like a friend, job or spouse etc. You spend time contemplating the past, present and future.

I simply shot this with my zoom lens, taking account that since it was not in direct sunlight that I would bring down the shutter speed to grab as much data as I could so I can brighten it up just a tad in post. I added a tiny bit of saturation to bring up the vibrancy of the greens.

D90, 18-200mm vr

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The Boathouse

In Mount Dora, walk to the end of North Donnelly street and you will walk into a very nice park that meets the edge of Lake Dora. This park can be seen on Google Maps, although it is unmarked, it is a great place to take in a sun set over the lake or just a place to stop and think. Adjacent to this park is the Mount Dora Boating Center and Marina.

Pointing the camera right into the sun is pretty tricky and the better results come from not using automatic mode. Essentially, this requires closing the aperture down to f20 or f22 to get the sun beams to flare out. Despite the smaller aperture, you will be exposing directly into the sun so bias towards a quicker shutter speed. Thankfully with using a digital camera, you are allowed to experiment with aperture and shutter first hand to see how it affects the final result. I do not want to detract from those who believe that there are specific mathematical rules to trying to figure out what shutter speed to use with what aperture. The basic rule of thumb is that every stop on the aperture requires twice or half the shutter speed you were at to maintain the same exposure.

D90, 18-200mm VR2