One and a half years ago, in April, 2023, a group of photographers gathered for two photography workshops in western Indiana.

After the workshop, I edited the team photos, picked out some of my favorite photos, edited them, and sent them off to the students. And then life continued. I never went back and edited the photos I took at those workshops.

Until this week! I knew there were some good photos in those two folders, and it was a lot of fun pulling them out and editing. I took the best from the two workshops and uploaded them to this Field Day album and this CAPTURE Indiana album.

I’ll not show all the new photos here in this blog post, but I did want to draw attention to a few of my very favorites!

On the Field Day, we had opportunity to take pictures on a local farm. I had never had opportunity to photograph sheep up close before, so they are one of the subjects I chose to photograph on that day.

While I was photographing them, there was this lamb that kept trying to eat the grass on the other side of the fence. It didn’t seem to me that there was any difference between the grass inside the pen, and outside the pen! But evidently little lamby thought so. And it kept getting tangled up in the fence, poor thing! After doing it a couple times, I decided a photo of it being stuck might make a nice illustrative photo, so the next time it got caught, I took some pictures of it before freeing it.

“Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” -Galatians 5:1

Another photo from that day that I kinda liked was of this old-looking horse at sunset. It’s so the feeling “put out to pasture”.

The Field Day was a Friday, for beginners.

CAPTURE Indiana was the next two days. Now that the beginners knew how to use their cameras, they could join the intermediate group going out in pursuit of really great pictures! And to get really great pictures, we headed off to Turkey Run State Park!

On the first day, we explored a little box canyon to see what little things we could find.

Then we headed down by the river.

We were a little too early in the year for there to be much foliage on the trees, but when we walked past this vibrant glade full of little blue flowers, I couldn’t resist trying to capture it. I don’t feel I did very well, but at least I tried.

The rest of the day we scouted out the canyons and tried to photograph sunset at a little overlook.

Now, there’s a photograph I took at the overlook that I didn’t want to share in the CAPTURE Indiana album because I figured people would take it out of context. Take a look at the following image. What message is it conveying?

Trespassing? Disobeying the rules? Having fun doing what we aren’t supposed to be doing? Exactly. That’s why I didn’t want to post it in the album. It would give the impression that on Lenspiration workshops we would do anything for a photo. We would be setting a bad example.

But let me tell you the true story behind this photo!

There was some construction going on the trail downhill from the overlook. So, the park closed off the overlook. We didn’t find out about this until we arrived at the overlook to get our sunset pictures. What a disappointment! So, we called the park office. “May my photography group go beyond the ‘Do Not Enter’ signs go down to the overlook for sunset photos?” The construction workers had long since headed home, and the park had no problem with us going down to the overlook. So, we all crossed over the boundary! And it was so out-of-the-ordinary to do so, we commemorated the occasion with a photo that had better not go viral. 🙂

“O that my ways were directed to keep thy statutes! Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all thy commandments.” -Psalm 119:5-6

There wasn’t much of a sunset, but before we left the park, some of us experimented with light painting down in a gorge.

And then experimented with more light painting at the Airbnb we were staying at that night!

The next day we did a lot of stuff, but I wanted to bring attention to this one spot we stopped for photos in the late morning.

It wasn’t the most epic place in the world, but I felt like it had a lot of potential. There were so many dead sticks and fallen logs and ugly, brown leave all around. There wasn’t much water coming down the falls either. But there was green moss growing on the rocks, and if you positioned yourself just right, you could begin to create a little bit of order out of the big mess.

Notice the gorgeous, glowing, sunlit forest above the falls.

Now take a look at the horizontal version below.

I tried to processes these two photos in exactly the same way. But where’s the gorgeous, glowing, sunlit forest above the falls? There’s not the same detail.

And that’s because in the raw photo, I completely overexposed the sky. The whites washed out completely so there was no detail to pull back in post processing.

Here are the two raw photos side by side

It’s an extremely high-contrast scene, but the vertical exposure captured just enough detail in the light areas that I was able to make it look gorgeous, glowing, and sunlit above the falls.

Something else you will observe in the horizontal photo is the a big patch of overexposed rock in the top left quadrant of the photo. This should have been a warning to me that my raw photo was overexposed.

However, I still wanted to use this photo, so I took it into Photoshop and generated some new rocks to get the following result:

Down to a Trickle
The Punch Bowl, Turkey Run State Park, Indiana
Download as a free desktop background in the next Latest from Lenspiration update (subscribe)

With such a major change, I asked myself, “Is this going too far?” With the ability we have in editing nowadays to tweak, change, manipulate, or add anything we want, this is a good question to ask. To what extent do we go with editing before it ceases to be photography and simply becomes a form of digital art?

This would be a good discussion, and a long one, so feel free to comment below with your perspective. But let me just conclude with this thought: if I need to edit a photo as much as I did with the one above, perhaps I should take it as an admonition to think more diligently about exposure, composition, creative angle, etc. next time I’m in the field.

“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.” -Philippians 4:8

And now we’re headed back! One and a half years later. This time to just meet up and have fun exploring the waterfalls and gorges of western Indian in the fall colors! Click here for more details.

I currently have $50 in a scholarship fund to put toward any workshop, so if you or anyone you know (who hasn’t signed up for this EXPLORE yet) would like to take advantage of that, feel free to contact me here.

See you there!