Taken with the Nikon D40 in Boise, Idaho on April 4, 2009. Aperture-Priority Exposure Mode, 55mm, 1/60sec at f/5.6 ISO 200, +0.67 exposure compensation, Nikon Raw Format converted to Adobe DNG format. Edited in Lightroom 2.3

While visiting my sister and her family in Boise a few weeks ago, Julie and I managed to sneak away for a couple hours for lunch (yummy Greek food) and a photowalk downtown.  I was very surprised to see how cute downtown Boise can be and by how many people ride bikes! Bikes everywhere! I give credit to the residents and city policy to engender such a community (very cool). I had no problem finding a bike with a fair amount of character to photograph and almost immediately came across this gem of a rusty red bike. I tried a lot of different angles to shoot the bike some wide, some close like this one, some of the sweet basket etc. I liked this one the best by a long shot (it took about 5-6 minutes for me explore and finally make this image). 

I shot this at f/5.6 (best our lens can do at 55mm) but still maintained a nice shallow depth of field because I was so close to the subject (you can see just enough of the back ground for it to be interesting).  The curved lines of the wheel are very successful at drawing the eye of the viewer into the image (whether one starts on the bottom or the top). Obviously, I am a big fan of the texture.

The image received a small crop of about 10 percent from the top right corner and I hit the image with my homegrown Urban Grunge preset. I adjusted the black and white points to keep my blacks from clipping and to add some controlled contrast. After the black point adjustment (which was pretty minor because I didn’t want to wreck the contrast I had going for me) I used the adjustment brush to further control the black point in two locations (just below the fender at the bottom of the image and curb on the upper left side). 

After painting in the areas where I had clipped blacks I resolved that problem.  I hope that tip helps.   🙂

I had a lot of fun editing this image and I hope you enjoy the image I made and also learned something about photography and lightroom.  Remember to make images and not just take them.  Spend some time getting to know your subject; think, explore, and learn.  🙂