Whilst shooting at one of my favourite beaches which has a river running through it, i noticed that the fast flowing water was reflecting the colour of the shingle banks together with the blue sky, in a mixture of some rather beautiful pastel colours.
I would be grateful for any feedback on this. Tell me what works and what doesn’t. I don’t normally shoot small abstract scenes like this and but recently i’ve become more aware of the more intimate scenes.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Long Exposure using lee big stopper.
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IG seaandlandscapes
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Miguel,
I’m quite certain I know what you saw and what you were going for. Finding reflecting colors in the rushing water - one of my most favorite subjects. First, you’ve recognized the colors which would be the base of whatever you might want to try and capture from here.
One of the variables we have control over is shutter speed. You didn’t mention and I don’t know how fast the water was flowing, but I’d guess this was somewhere around 1/8th? Not fast enough to freeze the water, and perhaps not long enough to show motion blur.
Looks like the very center of the frame is the most sharp - which is also where the warm color is reflecting. And getting back to shutter speed - the faster the shutter speed, the more need for critical focus (IMHO); where as with the longer shutter speed and motion blur you can get away with less critical focus - it’s all blurry anyway!
for me, I like what you’ve seen and recognized, but the motion blur and focus are just in between where one might go further in either direction.
another alternative here is the new thang ---- ICM - intentional camera movement. With shutter speeds of 1/4s and slower and slower, moving the camera against patterns, shapes and colors can result in some pretty abstract views.
If you have a chance to return here - just start experimenting…
Lon
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Thanks Lan for the feedback.
It is definitely something I want to experiment with more. Had I known I would like the shot so much afterwards, I probably would have spent more time experimenting whilst there. But I’m happy that im starting to notice scenes like this anyway and less of the obvious grand scenes.
Yes I’m pretty sure the shutter speed was indeed 1/8. The tide was going out so the water was flowing fairly quickly.
The light was still too strong when not using the ND filter and using the smallest aperture, but with the filter I had it was too dark so had to shoot wide open to get the shutter speed I wanted. Hence the shallow DoF. I believe 1/8th was the brightest before any clipping started to occur.
It definitely gives me a nice feeling capturing a scene like this.
I like the idea of what you are going for with this image, but I agree with Lon that it is kind of in between being sharp and being blurred. As far as processing I would add a bit more contrast to the scene to emphasize the warm / cool color contrast.
