My first time posting a image and I reviewed the site about that. This simple water fall in a park I have seen most of my life so wanted to try something different with photography. Since I am new to water in motion photography so any feedback is welcome, lighting, length of exposures
Any artistic feedback is welcome
Used a 6D mark ii, TS-E 24mm Lens ISO 100 at F/22 for 3.2 seconds with a 3 Stop ND filter. So this is a panorama created in Lightroom Classic
Stunning Image!!! I feel like some minor cropping and dodgeing and buring can help draw the eye to the falls! I’ve posted a very quick example of what I mean! Great work my friend!!!
Hi Dean and Welcome to the NPN Community. I really like this shot the detail in the water is excellent and the composition is done well. As @mike9 mentioned, some cropping may help. I took the liberty to address a couple of your questions and played with the photo in LR as well.
Exposure time is perfect for the water and it really gives it the “feathery” feel. A polarizer or ND filter could also help bring down your stops a bit alowing for a longer exposure is you really want smoother water.
Thanks for sharing !
Thanks Todd and Mike. This is exactly why I joined the network. Cropping has been a weakness for me to make a photo prefect. I actually spend a lot of time trying to frame a photo how I want it. I moved a few times within a couple of feet to frame this. But still never perfect. I love the dodge and burn idea, wow back in the dark room days since I heard that term. I will take the advice and upload a update. I have been using photoshop since version 2 but lightroom has come a long way so been using that more. I used a 3 stop ND filter and have a 10 stop. Thinking about a 6 stop because I did not want to shoot at f/22, maybe the 10 stop would have worked better here. I had a variable ND filter but returned it and got slim single stop which works out much better with 24mm.
I did a update on this based on your comments
Welcome to NPN.
I like the composition a lot. Not sure it needs any cropping IMO. It’s a little bright for my taste. A bit HDRish. The main thing I see is blown out highlights in the clouds, water and the rock behind the tree branch.
Thanks Bradley I think a cloudy day might have been better for this one. I may go back again when the marine layer is around. I might go back to the raw files and see if that can be addressed,
Dean,
Welcome to NPN! What a fabulous first post to start off with. One of the great things about this image is that you’re already starting with a great image… and any critiques or suggestions are merely small tweaks to elevate this to the next level.
I really like the edits Todd did and your second post is an excellent rework. I do like the crop. For my tasted I would burn down or otherwise bring back some of the blue in the UL, but maintaining taming the cloud highlights. I like the crop from the top because I felt the original the tree/leaves were a bit dominant - However, in your original I think the presence of the undulating branch was nice feature as it somewhat echoed the rocks and cascading water below. I liked that with the original, but has been diminished somewhat with the crop (not that this point is a big deal either way)
Oh, and I think the water treatment/longer exposure is just right for these falls. there’s a couple blown areas, mostly on the right side of the top of the falls - but the areas are small and really inconsequential to the overall impression.
Lastly, I would burn down a little more what’s left of the brighter rock in the LLC.
Otherwise, you’ve got a great image here!
Lon
Welcome to NPN Dean,
Great first image! @Todd_Grivetti and @Lon_Overacker suggestions are what I would do as well. Well seen and captured. Looking forward to more from you.
Welcome Dean!
I’ll just echo, those guys said it better than I can. Hope to see more images in the future.
