Twenty-Six Turtles

Twenty six turtles enjoying the early spring sun (click to enlarge)
X-T1, 55-200mm lens @ 200mm; 1/1000th sec. @ f/6.4; ISO 400; 5 image panorama stitched in Lightroom CC

It has been a warm spring in southeastern Virginia so far in 2016.  As I drove around recently, looking for interesting subjects, I spotted these 26 turtles sunning on an old log in a pond.  A sure sign of spring.  Over the years, I have seen many turtles on the logs in this pond, but never near 26 on one log.

To me this is really not a very good image.  Why? In the original image, there is an awful lot of clutter which makes distinguishing the turtles from the background difficult. However, due to the nature of the only place one could stand, there was no way to recompose to separate the clutter from  the turtles.  The only solution I saw at the time would have been to gain about 6 additional feet in height to separate the turtles from the background clutter.  In other words, look down on the turtles on the log from above.

In this final image, consisting of 5 images stitched together and cropped, I purposely darkened the foreground and background as well as tried to tone down the brightness of some of the dead branches, which were very reflective and distracting.   It seems to be a bit easier to focus in the turtles now.

Thanks for looking. Enjoy! 

Dennis A. Mook 

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