Another visit to Thumb Lake, from our Michigan trip last month. Tried something new with this shot, and wasn’t sure if it’d work out or not. Fortunately, I think it did. I had to look at it off-and-on for awhile, and it kept growing on me. Plus, I had to ponder how I was going to process it, and finally decided on a somewhat minimal approach. I did do some HDR and tonemapping, but used a preset and didn’t put a lot of thought into it.
I shot this with an 800 ISO, which leaves it a tad grainy when looking close. The background is purposely out-of-focus. I like how your eye is drawn to the fence rail and solitary leaf, then your eye gets drawn back into the photo to the blurry yet still distinguishable lake and autumn colors in the trees in the background.
Another aspect that appeals to me more and more is the “layered” look of the far shore(s). The lake actually does veer off the the left behind the closest trees in the left of the frame.
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