Today is National Wreaths Across America Day. Owner of Worcester Wreath Company formed this organization 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 used the tilting Vari-angle LCD to put the camera way low and look through the LCD to compose on the back of the camera. I love this feature and used it again in the photo below.]

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

I shot the photo in RAW and recovered the shadows and highlights in Lightroom. Here is what it looked like before I adjusted the image:

While Nikon has many settings that will get some pretty great 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 vision.

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

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

After ingesting the photos into Adobe Lightroom, one more thing I do first 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. Note that lens correction is not a simple fix that applies to any lens – corrections are lens-specific. In addition, since each lens model design has a unique optical formula, you must uniquely customize lens corrections 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, popped the flash up on the Nikon D750, and filled in the shadows. Unfortunately, while I could have done an OK job using Adobe Lightroom to open the shadows, the flash added a catch light in their eyes.