Yesterday morning found me back at Holy Field Vineyard and Winery, shooting the harvest. The grapes weren’t quite ready for last week’s visit but this time the parking area was crowded with cars and the fields filled with people picking and toting fruit.

I went to the ground for this shot and held my D700 with the 17-35 Nikkor down in the grass, blindly pointed upward. I had imagined the shot as being a silhouette as the sun was directly behind the central worker but once I opened the file in Adobe Camera Raw, I was amazed at how much detail I could actually pull out of the shadows without losing the blue sky. In the past I’ve found that the Fill Light slider would create some weird outlines along high-contrast edges if taken past 10 or so. Here I’ve cranked it up to 54 and things look fine. I’m not sure if that’s an improvement in ACR, or the D700’s files can handle it better, or if this particular shot is more forgiving. At any rate, the recovery is amazing.