This is another shot of the Prairie river, but standing on a bunch of rocks, trees and branches that didn’t allow for a tripod. It was handhold or nothing. So…I stood out there, teetering on two boulders and did what I could. In color there is even more to see than all the detail here, so I did a down & dirty monochrome conversion then played with a few color sliders to adjust the light and dark tones. Also played with the local adjustment brush to manage the forested background and the watercourse itself. Now I look at it again, I think I could have brought down the bg more. Here it is -
I’m not sure it works. I feel like there’s too much detail. I didn’t increase clarity or texture except in the single digits to improve some local contrast, but…I don’t know. Should I fake blur in the water to make it less jarring? That feels weird to me, but it might work. I haven’t tried and only thought of it just now. Ps isn’t my main editing sw, but I have it.
Specific Feedback Requested
If you read the above then you know what I’m feeling about this one. It seems … I don’t know. Unsettled. Should it be? I can always shoot it again, but unless we get a MAJOR flood, the rocks are still going to be choked with debris that makes putting a tripod there not possible (the rock is super skinny, too so even if there wasn’t a metric ton of wood on it, I don’t think the legs would fit except completely folded).
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Lumix G9
Lumix G Varios 12-35mm f/2.8 lens @ 24mm (48mm equiv.)
f/7.1 | 1/80 sec | ISO 400
Handheld
Lr processed for extensive management of tones and ‘crispy-ness’ - see above. Ps to remove a really annoying branch.
It is unsettling in a way, I think because of the combination of uniform contrast across the frame + lots of small details. Often, when I have this situation, I will apply negative clarity-texture-dehaze to the “background” parts. I did a quick edit on this, to show what I mean. For the area outside of the river, I applied negative clarity-texture-dehaze and darkened it. Because I feel that the water is the main subject here, I then put a radial filter on the water and reduced the exposure while increasing the whites and shadows. My goal was to emphasize the flow lines of the water.
Thanks Bonnie. I think that helps. Obviously there wasn’t anything I could do to ‘clean up’, but by softening the edges I think it makes it less frenetic. Maybe I’ll have a go myself. Thanks for taking the time to have a go at it.
Hi Kristen. I realize you said you couldn’t use a tripod but I think a slower SS was definately called for here. IMHO there is just way too much detail in the water.
Yeah, this is a goner I think. I’ll have to see about what I can do when I revisit. Who knows…maybe magical beavers will have come and removed all the woody debris. That would help!
If you live close to this scene Kristen and can get back out there before all the water disappears I would think about reshooting this one. There is so much chaos that the viewer is overwhelmed a bit. Does your camera have Image stabilization? If it does, with a wide angle lens you should be able to successfully hand hold shots down to 1/5 of a second and that’s all you would need to tame that water down. My camera has 5 stops of IS so that certainly helps but also reducing your ISO as far as it will go and stopping down to a point that will give you a slower shutter speed would also work without a tripod and without filters. Good luck if you go and reshoot this.
Yeah there’s a lot competing for a viewer’s attention here. And yes, I have dual IS so I could have probably slowed down a bit. Maybe I’ll give that a go when I return. And no need to worry about the water disappearing. The Prairie is pretty much always like this. I believe its headwaters are a pair of spring fed lakes up in the next county or two. I plan to paddle them as part of my project to document this river. Since it’s already buggy out, that could be soon!
I think this scene/ location translates well to B&W (the rocks and forest trees come across very well). The composition also works well. I guess that I have just grown too accustomed to seeing and liking silky long exposure water. The water at this shutter speed has kind of a jarring effect on me, it looks too “crunchy”. Aside from using IS to handle longer shutter speeds, is it a location that could work with a monopod, if not a tripod?
Well I don’t have a monopod, but I might be able to use the tripod with the legs folded in the next time. If I can scramble everything out there. I’ll have to take a picture of my perch so you can see it.
Everyone’s taste is different, but I too think that smoother water would make all the difference here. Sometimes a location just doesn’t allow the image we really want to capture. Sometimes I can brainstorm a way to make it work, sometimes I just accept what is possible, and sometimes I move on and look for an alternative.
Yesterday while I was at the Prairie shooting the cascade I posted recently, I zoomed in down river to show where I was standing to take the shot in this post.
See where the sticks and logs and trees are growing on the rock in the middle. Yeah, that’ s it. It sticks out between this fast channel and a slower one just behind it. Out of shot to the right is a big cedar that makes a bridge over part of the slower channel. It’s crazy and really slippery most of the time.
