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First Picture Post - C&C welcome and encouraged!

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Diggs72

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This was a stop along side a hiway that I was travelling, I had my tripod and thought that I would try a long exposure. I am fairly happy with it, but I am sure that it could be better ;)

Camera was D40 exposure was 1/3 sec @f22 lighting was mid afternoon and bright. I was hand holding a wrong sized ND4 as I can't seem to find a step down ring.

Comments please!

 
I like the effect of the water...the long shutter did a good job...

The other parts of the image look a little dark to me.... maybe it's my monitor...

I would have maybe shot it at f11 or something to let a bit more light in for the surroundings.....

Nice shot though... !!

Moey!
 
Wow! I just looked at it from work on my laptop - it is REALLY dark! I guess I will have to check my monitor settings at home.

Thanks for the feedback. I did reduce the brightness alot in PP as I thought that it looked way to bright using lightroom's auto tone setting. Perhaps I am the one that is wrong!

Thanks again.
 
In my decidedly non-expert opinion, the picture is a bit flat, there is no punch to it. The areas in the background lit up by the sun are too muted. Also, the rocks in the foreground should be sharper. The picture is soft in general.

I like the spot you picked.
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Nikon D70, Nikon D70s, Nikkor 18-70DX, Nikkor 50 1.8D, Nikkor 18-200 DX VR, SIGMA 70-300 APO, KENKO 12,20&36, Nikon SB-800, 2 Nikon SB-50DX's
 
This is a pretty seen and you composed it well. Have you tried applying a custom curve in Photoshop or the shadow highlight tool? The mid tones are very dark as you protected the highlights as you should when you expose something like this. Lightening them up and getting the contrast correct makes this photo shine.

Morris

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http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~morris/POD
 
Hi,

It looks like the Athabasca falls in the Canadian Rockies, am I right?

About the picture - if you shot raw, or maybe even jpg, try to use some PP to make the background a little more vivid - more green and light. It will do the picture a lot of good, I think. Other than that - nice shot.
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Oren Sarid
Israel

Please click to see my pictures, comment and rate them in my galleries at http://oren.sarid.fotopic.net/ (Canon) and http://www.flickr.com/photos/oren-sarid/ (Nikon)
 
Diggs72 said:
This was a stop along side a hiway that I was travelling, I had my
tripod and thought that I would try a long exposure. I am fairly
happy with it, but I am sure that it could be better ;)

Camera was D40 exposure was 1/3 sec @f22 lighting was mid afternoon
and bright. I was hand holding a wrong sized ND4 as I can't seem
to find a step down ring.
Click to expand...
I agree with the others - you got a great exposure (avoiding highlights) and a very nice composition, especially given the bad light. The shadow details can be retrieved easily using the tools that others have mentioned. The blur is very nice. You might want to avoid f/22 if possible because you can begin to lose some sharpness due to diffraction above about f/16 (for a D40; f/11-13 for 10 MPixel Nikon sensors) and because DSLR lenses are not generally designed for small apertures. You have to get used to this difference from film cameras. In this case, you may have had no choice w/out an ND8. Anyway, absolute sharpness is not critical for this image.

Use Shadow/Highlight, Curves adjustment, or similar techniques to bring out the shadow details and give the image a more 3D look. This is an excellent base image for PPing.

Doug
 
Thanks everyone for the comments, and yes Oren this is the Athabasca falls in Jasper National Park. Luckily I live about 3.5 hours from the park and you never go without a subject there.

As to the photo, this was my first attempt at the long exposure and have only had the camera for a few days (about 400 shots of dogs and kids prior to this) the issue I have now is when I PP the photo, I loose the detail in the water.

I will keep working and re-post the final image to this thread for the experts to have another look.

Thanks again, your comments help people grow.
 
Nice job touching it up. It looks like an entirely different photo now. I like it a lot.

--
Regards,

Jeremy
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'I already told you more than I know.'
 
Your composition is good and the water looks just right. You state it was sunny yet it looks like a gray day. Have you tried using curves or shadow highlights to brighten this up a bit? Be careful to maintain a good black point and I expect this photo will pop.

Morris

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http://qcpages.qc.cuny.edu/~morris/POD
 
Beautiful subject and great composition. Your second post is really beautiful.
--
Did you ever stop to think, and then forget to start again?
SueSee
 
The day was sunny and overcast - about 2:00pm pacific time, you can see the shadows from the clouds on the mountain side, and the water was a nice frothy white. This was my first attempt and I now know just how easy it is to over expose water in this fashion. This was about the 10th picture taken and the other pics were way over exposed.

For PP I brought the image into CS3 and applied layers for levels, curves, and saturation. Then added overlays (50% gray fill) for doging and burning. Rocks and trees were dodged to try and brighten them up a bit and then the water was burnt to keep the detail in it as whenever I applied a curve or levels that makes the mountain pop, the water would overexpose.

I did try and fool around with gradient fills on the mountain side to try and get it to darken up a little bit but with the tree line there was too much detail that was gettting blurred and you could see a line which didn't look good.

I agree with Morris, now it is looking quite gray and not so vibrant green.

I am starting to think I need to go for another drive and this time I will shoot at a golden hour and either get a new ND4 or ND8 that fits my lens or a step down ring (which I can't bring myself to get on EBay due to the shipping costs)

-----------------------------------
Derek D. - Just one snap away from billiant - Hmm, maybe next time ;)
 
Nice effect, But the image isn't exposed well at all, Way too dark and no sharpness at all.
What lens did you use?
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