I must confess that I never quite warmed up to the idea of slow shutter speed water. I mean, I like it in intimates with just rocks and leaves but it looks somehow artificial to me. So here I am posting one such image. Does this look too artificial?
There are actually a second reason that this may look artificial. Is the water too dark with respect to the rest of the image?
This is a composite of two exposures for dynamic range - one for the water and the other for all else.
Igor,
I know that some donāt like the slow shutter speed water look, and some love it (Iām one of these). While this effect doesnāt look like the stream as you experience it in reality, neither would a fast shutter speed freezing all motion. It all depends what you like. Itās good that youāre posting an image type that you ānever quite warmed up to.ā
I really love this image. The composition, color, and processing all look great to me. The color of the river is beautiful, and the luminosity looks spot on to me. My only wish is for a little bit more of the rock in the lower left. It feels a little small as is, but I wouldnāt want to crop it and lose some of the angled cascade above it.
Beautifully composed and processed, Igor. This water looks great to me - still retaining some texture but conveying its dynamic nature. I really like that tilted tree - it adds interest and is nicely aligned with the stream course. Minor, but I would clone out that rock in the LLC. Itās not big enough to include, IMO.
I like this a lot. The water shutter speed looks really good to me. I would agree with Dave about the rock LL. Also, my wants a little CW rotation, maybe making the left tree straight? Minor, but thought I would throw it out there.
I hear you on the shutter speed thought, Igor, but I think it works well here. I personally strive for the āhappy mediumā approach in most moving water scenes where you can see plenty of textures, but still a bit of blur to convey the movement. While you can get too milky and arguably overdone when it comes to the slow shutter speeds, Iāve always felt that freezing the water with a faster shutter speed feels even more off. Iāll have to agree with the other opinions regarding the rock on the lower left. It doesnāt seem big enough to direct the eye into the scene. Iād personally clone it out and maybe burn the area ever to slightly to subtly guide the eyes up from that corner.
Igor, Iāll start by saying that I like this image a lot. The composition is well done, with the slight S-curve of the river, and the leaning tree adds a lot of interest without competing for attention with the river. I think your processing of the land is great, the exposure, colors and texture of the land are really nice. The rock in the LLC is an eye magnet and I would clone it away too.
I am one of those who prefers the cotton candy effect water. But itās not always easy to pull off well, and bracketing exposures to enhance how the water looks is a good start. The water does not look artificial to me at all. Is the water too dark relative to the rest of the image? Well, to my taste, itās both yes and no, itās too dark in some places, and too bright in others. This requires either some local dodging and burning of the water, or possibly even a third darker exposure to blend in to tame the brightest highlights in the water.
I would burn down the very brightest highlights, especially the area to the right and below of the rock cascades, and in the background at the bend. I would dodge the water above the rocks and below the bend, to balance luminosity and to bring out the green color in the water. I would also dodge the mini-falls below the brown rocks, to draw attention to that area. i would try for something like this rework. While I can see why you used the white frame to set the land off from the background of the website, it may also be having the effect of making the water look darker, so thats why I think some local dodging would help (because the frame helps other things).
I like the composition especially the way that the flow of the river gives way to the leaning tree to complete the s-pattern. I think the shutter speed that you chose strikes a nice balance between motion and texture and conveys the power in the stream. I could see brightening the mid-tones in the water a little (it wouldnāt take much I donāt think), but I donāt think I would have been bothered by it if you hadnāt mentioned it.
I also like this, Igor. I am in the camp of loving the look given by the slow shutter speed and I think you have done it really well. Edās edit to tame the brightest highlights in the water is a very good move. Although I do think I would brighten the overall image just a tad more.
Igor, this is wonderful in many ways. First, the vertical comp is very strong with the graceful, but raging water carving itās way down the canyon. The image is well balanced. For me, I find the water color gorgeous! The overall processing, colors, etc. are all excellent as well.
I expect this is just an illusion, but I would agree with the suggestion to give this a slight CW rotation. But then Iām not sure, I havenāt played with doing that. I would also agree with a CA clone in the LLC. Itās just on the edge of being big enough to be included, but as presented just barely not enough, so perhaps better removed.
Regarding water and shutter speeds, Iām with most others who believe that there are zero shutter speeds that capture what we āseeā with our eyes and brains. Static, one-dimensional photograph vs. the experience of āseeingā motion real-time, our brains processing real-time giving us a totally different experience than a freeze-frame image - regardless of shutter speed. As someone mentioned, freezing with a fast shutter speed isnāt any more real than a cotton-candy 30-second exposure. Personally, each scene, situation and conditions are different. I think youāve chosen beautifully here - The water is far enough away that critical detail is not important - itās the flow, the color, the patterns and even contrasts that make the water what it is - not detail or texture. Other scenes may be completely different. Iāll repeat - the water is gorgeous here.
Lon
I really like this image Igor. I think the water looks great and the composition really pulls my eye through the frame. One thing I have tried is to take a few exposures of the water at different shutter speeds and then you can always blend faster speeds back in to give it more life than the smooth stuff caused by the longer exposures.
Well, I guess Iām going to be the lone voice in the wilderness here, but this image is just not doing it for me. Whatās there is nice with your usual attention to detail and whatnot but my mind just wants to see where the river is going to the left. Perhaps the river doesnāt even keep going in that direction but in my mind it does, and I want to see it. Iām afraid that kind of kills the image for me, sadly. As for shutter speed, I keep going back and forth on that. I do think the slow shutter, unless done correctly, is both overdone and in many cases done in a very sloppy manner. I like moving water but I want to see clear & sharp texture in the water throughout. Looking back at some of my first moving water images makes me shudder with disgust sometimes at how bad they were. I also enjoy the frozen motion in higher speed shots but again, they have to be done correctly. The water motion in this image looks very nice IMHO and gives a pleasing viewing effect although I would have preferred it to be shot a little faster. Sorry to be such a Debbie Downer but thatās kinda how I see it.
Igor, I am late to the game but I thought I would chime in as well. I like the color and water as presented. Yes I agree the rock in the LLC should go and some of the subtle tweeks mentioned are earlier good well. I guess I am with @Bill_Chambers in the wilderness as well. I like much of the scene but the left side exclusion of the river is a distraction for me. Maybe there was a good reason to exclude it but I am wishing for more of the river.
This looks great. I like how the stream lets me walk back into the scene and light and exposure seem spot on. I will say that there seems to be counterclockwise tilt to everything. i know that one trunk in the center is obviously leaning on itās own, but the trunk on the far right seems like it should be vertical.
This must have been fun for you to see this scene and to step out of your comfort zone. I agree with others on the LLC rock and toning down the highlights in the water. I like the leaning trees as they open up questions of what happened to them. The log jam in the middle shows the power of the water and lets the viewer guess whatās upstream. I do have a question for you relating to the shutter speed. When taking the photo did you try a variety of ss and if so, why did you pick this one?
Chris, I did make about 6 exposures, but they were more for dynamic range than for water detail. I always shoot water at 1/4 or 1/3 seconds. I experimented a fair amount several years ago and came to that conclusion. However, I donāt recommend a āformulaā like that. It depends on the speed of the water flow and also how far you are away from the water. So experimentation is a good thing. In my opinion, error on the side of too fast a shutter speed is better than too slow.
Iām absolutely with you on the slow speed flowing waters convention, Igor. Here I think youāve got a pretty good rendering - the waters donāt have the look of hair which I canāt quite handle myself ! Overall composition and processing of real quality.
@Alan_Kreyger, @Dave_Dillemuth, @Adhika_Lie, @Brian_Schrayer, @Harley_Goldman, @Bill_Chambers, @Tony_Kuyper, @Matt_Payne, @Lon_Overacker, @Kevin_D_Jordan -
Thank you for all your comments. There were so many suggestions.
@Ed_McGuirk, Thank you for the rework of the water. I think it does improve it somewhat.
But most of all thank you for finding that this water is realistic enough to be acceptable. Iām starting to come around to agreeing with you.
And speaking of the realism of water. As I understand it the brain sees reality by seeing a multitude of sharp images almost simultaneously and interprets them into a coherent image. So we see frozen images but they are not arrested in space like an photo image. All in all, a frozen image comes closer to what we see than a blur. One of the most important, most endearing qualities of water is itās translucence. We see that translucence even as water is moving. But a slow shutter speed renders water into milk. Even with a faster shutter speed that shows detail the water remains opaque. Other than glacial ice melt I canāt think of any water that looks like that. In fact, the clearer the water the more we like it. Iām at the Smith River as I write this and the water is amazing.
This picture was shot on a day that was partly cloudy. Big puffy clouds drifted above and you had to time it right or it messed up your exposure. I was driving over a bridge when this scene caught my eye. A cloud had been over the canyon at the time and that river pouring out of a dark slot caught my eye. When I set up I waited for that light to reappear. The bright light killed it for me. I tried to reproduce that moment in processing but it was a bit too dark. I could have made the vegetation pop by further exposing it, warming it, and saturating it but thatās not what turned me on. It would have been a different image. So I brightened it a bit to keep it from being morose but kept the colors subdued.
Regarding the rock - Itās there and much larger in the original but the water looked too wide for the composition so it had to go. Perhaps I will superimpose it some way. It was a nice addition.
The tilt āproblemā is interesting. First of all Iām not sure this isnāt level. But I kind of like that objects, including the river, are going every which way. I feel it adds energy to a scene that is pretty violent.
Iām good with your preference for seeing moving water in this more āliteral lookingā way, itās a matter of personal preference. I have a different view on this, I actually like that ācotton candyā water doesnāt look like it does in real life. I like that I donāt know how it will look until after I take the shot. I like that I have some measure of creative control over waters appearance via brackets of shutter speeds. I like that I can be pleasantly surprised sometimes by how the water turns out.
There are a number of things like this in nature photography, such as star trails, or even how the Milky Way looks in many night photos, neither are how our eyes see these things. Some people like star trails and some donāt (including me), but it is still a valid creative choice.
Photographers manipulate the appearance of reality in a lot of ways, some successfully and some not so much. But to me the fact that something doesnāt literally look like how our eyes see it, doesnāt mean that it looks artificial (which might imply inferior to some). Instead, it means that we have the option to make creative choices about literal vs. non-literal interpretations.
With all that said, I think how your water ended up looking here is very pleasing.
Ed, this subject has been discussed for over a decade now. Iām certainly not against post processing. Iām merely remarking that fuzzy water images lose waterās perhaps greatest quality - translucence. I donāt find this objectionable if everything else has been heavily manipulated. But having parts of the image appear photographic and parts not, does not appeal to my artistic senses.
I like this a lot, Igor! Nice and clean. The only suggestion I could make would be to add a slight vignette to darken all the edges and draw more attention to the center but I think it still works without it. Very nice processing and I love the simple, concise composition.
