stream/waterfall shot

Hello,

I took this and it's ok I suppose, but for the purposes of this thread I really wanted to pick your collective brains about stream/waterfall photography (I hope that this is the right place for that?). Specifically, what sort of exposure times are we looking at for that silky, delicate flowing water look without burning out the highlights (I guess it'd depend on the stream, its flow), and also are there any tricks to be aware of. For example it struck me that using a polariser next time might be a good thing. Anyone have any experience with this sort of stuff they care to share?






Thanks!

It's looks like a good shot, wish I'd taken it Lovely colours. A bigger version would be good! I might have cropped out the path on the left to make the river run more from left to right.

Hm, I actually took the bigger version off and replaced it with a smaller one - the other one looked toooooo big for here. And also I keep having stupid run-ins with a particular moderator on another pentax forum and I didn't want to push things here with a huge image. I tried editing it but my editing time has run out - you can click through to the larger version on Flickr though.

Totally agree on what you're saying, that's one of the annoyances I have with it - it needs more on the right and less on the left for me. And the camera needs to be lower. And I need something more interesting in the foreground. And... =)

The forum software here should scale down any image you post to 800 wide - although it still downloads the full size version, so don't post a 1 megabyte jpeg Flickr's 1024 pixel 'medium' size works reasonably well.

The click through to Flickr doesn't work unfortunately. I haven't found a way to hyperlink an image on this forum.

Not sure a polariser would help here except for adding to your exposure time which may be a good thing if you wanted the water to look even smoother. I think it's a great shot with good shadown detail (could have been a problem deep in the woods)

You're being unduly harsh: there's plenty of foreground interest, in my opinion and the path actually accentuates the line of the river and leads the eye nicely through the image.

Best wishes,

Andrew

But if you do this we have to scroll from side to side and the resizing affects the quality. Much better to resize in Photoshop and upload the correct size to Photobucket. Don't let Photobucket resize either, it's not as good a result.

To experiment with the flowing water effect the use of a Neutral Density Filter is desirable.
A Polariser helps to reduce reflections and also reduces exposure.
You can us 2 Polarisers and if you rotate them in different directions, you can eliminate all light by varying degrees.

On your photo, I think your exposure is quite pleasing and the water effect is rather nice. The source of the stream is however, in the centre and would be better on the upper left third. I would also try and avoid or overcome, the highlights of the sky shining through the trees. A crop on the left and on the top, would possibly improve the composition.

How about this crop?




I'll delete the file if you want.

If you have the RAW file still (if you shoot RAW) you could try using the recover slider to tone down the burnt out highlights. Failing that, some very careful cloning/patching would work too (I was just too lazy to try it myself).

K.

I do not like the frame on the original image, it detracts to much (IMO)Wombles crop makes the shot much better.

Super crop, Kris.

Completely chnages the feel and flow of the original.

I also still like the original: just shows what cropping can do for an image.

Regards,

Andrew

That crop is very well judged Kris - really realises the shots potential to the fullest.

I tried that, but threw it out because of that stone in the bottom left which annoyed me "sitting in space". But, coming back to it, it looks good. Really I should just have had more of the right hand side in it, been lower and about 50 cm further forward - but I'll get to that when I go back in the summer

A polariser would have taken the shine off some of the foliage (ivy in the tree left hand side for instance, and perhaps increased the depth of colour in the water), but for me the main thing would be to exclude the sky, I don't like the bright highlights here.

And I think there's a drop of water on the lens, right hand side, where the bare thin tree trunk is.

Dan

I really like this image, only aspect I dont like is the stick in the foreground.

It used to be that we had to scroll side to side, but sometime a few months ago it got 'fixed' so the forum will now resize any larger images down to 800 wide. I've been posting 1024 wide for quite a while now, including in the fortnightlies.

I've tried Photobucket, and I much prefer Flickr. Far fewer adverts for one thing (it might even be zero, I cannot recall any ads, but I'm a paying member and perhaps they only show ads to the free members). I also find it has a much busier community aspect. Also Flickr hasn't had all these virus scares.

The Flickr API is also much better (does Photobucket even have one?), so you can have widgets on your webpage, or build full-on web apps like Fluidr.