Reservoir Lining

When completed in 1905 the Wachusett Dam was the largest Gravity Dam in the world, and impounded the world's largest public water supply (for Boston, MA.). Wachusett Dam, Wachusett Reservoir, Clinton, MA. Canon 5D Mark II, EF 15mm fisheye. 1/500s, f/10, ISO 100.

I recently purchased Adobe Lightroom. A bit behind the curve, but I would highly recommend it to anyone who still has reservations. I am running version 3.6 due to my aged laptop (Windows XP forever!). Two of the features that I find particularly useful are used in this photograph.

- Lens correction: As noted above, I shot this with a fisheye lens. Lightroom has lens correction profiles for many lenses. In this instance, I like how the program removed the fisheye's distortion. I have preferred to retain the distortion for artistic effect in other photos. The straight, horizontal dark line of trees on the far shoreline works much better here than the bowed appearance of the uncorrected version. All the lenses I own, except the EF 50mm Compact Macro, have profiles. I do find it strange that one of Canon's long-running lenses is missing from the available profiles. I'm pretty sure that I've updated to the latest version of 3.x available. Perhaps this oversight was corrected in version 4?

- Presets: I can't bring myself to just apply a preset to one of my photos, though I do find them a good starting point. Lightroom has dozens of black & white and color presets. The good thing is that these can then be adjusted to your own preferences. I also find this useful for gathering information on how to 'reverse-engineer' certain looks as the varous values of the presets are displayed in the module settings.