I live within a mile of this creek and frequently walk and run along its path. I took my camera on this morning last fall. The leaves were changing and dropping into the creek.
I saw this composition as a tapestry of geometry and pattern - a juxtaposition of the strongly geometric reflected trees and randomly scattered floating leaves and foam. I also captured this same composition without the floaters but this was far more interesting.
Technically, I handheld this capture at 1/1000 sec with a 70-300mm lens at f/5.6 and ISO 800. I might have been able to go higher with the ISO for greater DOF, but needed the speed of the shutter to freeze the motion of the water. I’m happy with the DOF I got because precision of technique was not my top goal.
Not much processing on this one - I wanted to keep it relatively simple. What do you like about it and what would you do differently?
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Any
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Any
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Matt, I’m a huge fan (and routine taker) of reflection abstracts. You’ve got a fine mix of golden trees and sky with the flecks of foam defining the surface. The scattered circles of ripple are a fun extra. For me, there’s always some tension between sharp and smooth. It’s also true that in abstracts, higher contrast gets more attention. In this case, I’m noticing the fall off in sharpness and in contrast towards the top of the frame. I think that processing for more contrast in the top 1/4-1/3 would let that part play a stronger role.
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Thanks, @Mark_Seaver. I see exactly what you mean about the contrast. I prepared the repost to bump up the contrast in the top 2/3, plus I adjusted down the whites to prevent them from blowing out and increased saturation just slightly to compensate. I really want to be careful with saturation.
Matt, I see you found another “sweet light intimate small scene”, it’s another good example. I think these intimate/abstracts in sweet light images can work very well with reflection shots (as was your previous one). The blue and gold colors work well here, and I think the “overlay” of leaves makes this more than just another autumn abstract reflection image. I love triangle shapes in images, and you have several nice ones here.
My only nit is what @Mark_Seaver mentions about the falloff in sharpness at the top. Out of necessity, one needs to use a telephoto focal length in this type of shot, and that creates DOF challenges, especially since you shot this at f5.6. For these type of scenes I prefer to use focus stacking to get more top to bottom sharpness.
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Matt, the redo is a fine improvement. To make comparing the repost with the original easy, you can add the redone version to your original post, just not the addition in the title by adding something like repost. BTW, since this is moving water, focus stacking is impossible. If you don’t mind letting the reflections go a bit soft, you can get nearly constant sharpness top to bottom with shutter speeds around 1/30 s. There are a ton of ways to play this sort of vision, so you should have lots of fun as you enjoy this creek through the seasons.
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@Ed_McGuirk, @Mark_Seaver, thank you both for your comments and encouragement.
Yes, the technique to nail these moving water scenes can be difficult - I’m going to experiment with various shutter speeds and apertures to evaluate the results.
