Time to get Wet

 
Tech Info: Nikon D90 | 70-300 @300mm | ISO 200 | f/5.6 | 1/1000 s | -0.33 EV
 
From the archives, a beautiful dog enjoying a nice cool dip in the Foster City lagoon during a hot summer day of 2009.
 

Temperatures are rising as we get closer to summer solstice in the northern hemisphere. We have had a very long and cold winter and spring didn’t even feel like one, so summer is very much appreciated. There has been good amount of snow during the winter and in fact Yosemite’s falls are in full glory because of that. So much that the park authorities had to declare flood warning and close down certain camp sites. I was supposed to join another buddy for heading to Yosemite to capture moonbows, but due to certain prior work engagements, can’t make it. If you are headed that way for the moonbow, you sure won’t be disappointed as there is no shortage of mist from those falls. I’ll have to wait another year or if the falls are still flowing high, then probably it’ll be just the next full moon 🙂
 
This image is from the archives. The high temperatures reminded me of a wet pet shot taken years ago. The moment that thought came, I was busy searching for that archived DVD which contained my images and managed to find it pretty fast enough too – I was better at tagging images then, compared to what I do now 🙁
 
Processing: By the time this shot was taken, I was convinced of moving from jpeg captures to raw. The jpeg would have been a disaster and since it was raw, managed to salvage something out of a badly exposed image.

1. Used Lightroom 3 to convert the raw image With basic adjustments to white balance, exposure options and some noise reduction.
2. Export the image to Photoshop CS4.
3. 2 layers of curves adjustments for different areas of the dog.
4. Resized the image for web.
5. Another curves layer for vignetting effect.
6. A smart-sharpen layer
7. Saved as 8 bit jpeg and added metadata, keywords through Bridge.

 
Hover your mouse over the image to see the Before version.