Image of the Day – Monday, October 5, 2009

Park Bench on the Louisiana State Capital Grounds
Friday past after getting off work at noon myself and a friend went to the downtown area of Baton Rouge to take a short photowalk at the two state capital buildings in Baton Rouge. This image was taken on the grounds of the newer of the two houses of government and we still refer to them as the “new” and “old” capitals. The grounds around the “new” capital (built in 1932) are beautiful and this scene is taken on the grounds to the east of the capital building.
Walking from the capital towards the old armory nearby I came across this simple scene. A sidewalk with park benches on either side facing each other and painted in a dark, shiny green. There were still a few bright yellow day lilies in bloom and the dark green against the yellow caught my eye.
I used a Nikon 18-135mm lens zoomed all the way to 135mm to shoot this picture at f/5.6 to create as narrow a depth of field as I could get. The bench was a few feet removed from the day lilies so I was able to get the look I wanted despite f/5.6 not being the narrowest depth of field I could have managed (I had a 50mm f/1.8 with me).
There was little post-processing involved here – conversion from RAW to JPG, a little dabbling with a curves layer and a touch of dodging and that was it.