It often pays dividends to have some idea of what look you want to achieve before you press the button. Although this particular day suffered from a lack of water going down the stream, the rich green canopy from the trees, a bit of moss on the rocks and a warm day brought to mind some exotic jungle scene (well exotic for here at least).
With that in mind, and given the relatively low water flow, I decided to go for a longish exposure. Given the target look, I took exposure from the base of the waterfall, reasonably representative of the shaded part of the scene and then deliberately underexposed by around 1-stop to enrich colours. With aperture set at f13 to get good depth of field at 16mm focal length (full frame) and with a circular polariser fitted this gave a 6-sec exposure at iso100. Original:
Not bad but lacking a bit in terms of composition - nothing particularly eye-catching.
What I liked was the contrast between the tannin-stained water and the greens of the moss and canopy with the rocks in the foreground. Time to crop with a square crop giving something more focussed:
Looks better to my eye at least. Still not enough to focus the eye though and to give that 'jungle clearance' sort of look I was after. Time to add a vignette to push the eye to the centre of the frame. A 5-stop graduated vignette yielded:
Better. When I looked at the scene I liked the way the bank on the right led down to the foreground rocks, accentuated by the sunlight coming through the tree canopy. Lets see if I can make a bit more of that with a brush-in exposure increase and perhaps further highlight the central water pool:
Because of the low flow and staining, the waterfall is a bit too insipid looking so add a bit of brush-in exposure and a little desaturation:
Not too happy about the rocks in the immediate foreground - a little too much reflected light despite the polariser. Brush in a little negative exposure into the foreground:
That's about it as far as I'm concerned. Literally took about 5-10 minutes in post to modify the photo - anything that takes more than that is either beyond me in terms of capability or stretches what I would like to think as realism (personal preference).
Nothing that I would call cheating - simply trying to use the digital processing to help to accentuate what was in the original image and to try to get the effect that the original scene deserved.
All processing done on the RAW file in Capture One and exported for this post as small JPGs.
If I can do it, so can you!
Comments always appreciated.
With that in mind, and given the relatively low water flow, I decided to go for a longish exposure. Given the target look, I took exposure from the base of the waterfall, reasonably representative of the shaded part of the scene and then deliberately underexposed by around 1-stop to enrich colours. With aperture set at f13 to get good depth of field at 16mm focal length (full frame) and with a circular polariser fitted this gave a 6-sec exposure at iso100. Original:
Not bad but lacking a bit in terms of composition - nothing particularly eye-catching.
What I liked was the contrast between the tannin-stained water and the greens of the moss and canopy with the rocks in the foreground. Time to crop with a square crop giving something more focussed:
Looks better to my eye at least. Still not enough to focus the eye though and to give that 'jungle clearance' sort of look I was after. Time to add a vignette to push the eye to the centre of the frame. A 5-stop graduated vignette yielded:
Better. When I looked at the scene I liked the way the bank on the right led down to the foreground rocks, accentuated by the sunlight coming through the tree canopy. Lets see if I can make a bit more of that with a brush-in exposure increase and perhaps further highlight the central water pool:
Because of the low flow and staining, the waterfall is a bit too insipid looking so add a bit of brush-in exposure and a little desaturation:
Not too happy about the rocks in the immediate foreground - a little too much reflected light despite the polariser. Brush in a little negative exposure into the foreground:
That's about it as far as I'm concerned. Literally took about 5-10 minutes in post to modify the photo - anything that takes more than that is either beyond me in terms of capability or stretches what I would like to think as realism (personal preference).
Nothing that I would call cheating - simply trying to use the digital processing to help to accentuate what was in the original image and to try to get the effect that the original scene deserved.
All processing done on the RAW file in Capture One and exported for this post as small JPGs.
If I can do it, so can you!
Comments always appreciated.
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