Nikon D750–Wreaths Across America

Nikon D750, 28-300mm, ISO 125, ƒ/8, 1/125

Today is National Wreaths Across America Day. This organization was formed in 1992 to:

REMEMBER the fallen
HONOR those that serve and their families and,
TEACH our children the value of freedom.
- See more at: http://www.wreathsacrossamerica.org 

Nikon D750, 14-24mm, ISO 320, ƒ/9, 1/30

These are the ceremonial wreaths. The ceremonial wreaths represent each branch of the military service including the POW/MIA and Merchant Marines. The one closest to the camera is the MIA, which I had the honor of presenting.

The letter sent to my grandparents stated that the U S Marine Corps "regretted to inform that 2nd Lt. James Stanley Leary, Jr., 2-G-23 Fourth Marine Division..had been declared Missing in Action while engaged against the enemy on the Island of Saipan, Marianas, in the Pacific."

[To get this photo I was able to use the tilting Vari-angle LCD to put the camera way low and look through the LCD to compose on the back of the camera. Love this feature and used it again on the photo below.]

Nikon D750, 28-300mm, ISO 100, ƒ/8, 1/125

To capture this wide of a dynamic range I shot the photo in RAW and then when in Lightroom slid the slider on the highlights to -98 and the shadows to +76. Here is what it looked like before I adjusted the photo:

While Nikon has many settings that will get you some pretty incredible JPEGs out of the camera, they still do not compare to shooting RAW and then working on the image to tweak and fine tune your image.

Nikon D750, 28-300mm, ISO 360, ƒ/8, 1/500

In this photo I didn't use a flash because I was too far away. This is 250mm full-framed, but put me a good 20 or more feet away. However the dynamic range that was caught I was able to again open up the shadows and tone the highlights for an acceptable photo.

Nikon D750, 28-300mm, ISO 140, ƒ/8, 1/250

I did increase the saturation using Adobe Lightroom's vibrance and set all the photos to +27.

Nikon D750, 28-300mm, ISO 100, ƒ/8, 1/125

One more thing which I actually do first after ingesting the photos into Adobe Lightroom is to enable profile corrections.

Lens Corrections is a tool within Lightroom’s Develop Module that allows fixing such lens problems as distortion, chromatic aberration, vignetting and perspective correction “non-destructively”, without leaving Lightroom. Keep in mind that lens correction is not a simple fix that applies to any lens – corrections are lens-specific. Since each lens model is designed with a unique optical formula, lens corrections must also be uniquely customized for each model.

Nikon D750, 28-300mm, ISO 100, ƒ/8, 1/200–Popup flash used 0 EV

One family asked for a photo and when I saw the man's hat I took the lens shade off the 28-300mm and then popped the flash up on the Nikon D750 and filled in the shadows. While I could have done an OK job using Adobe Lightroom to open up the shadows the flash added a catch light in their eyes.