Waterfalls, and lightning

Dylanwyer

Trying to promote my new web site heres 2 sample photos, please check it out!
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astockwell

Just a quick critique here if you don't mind. While they are nice shots, the waterfall one is very underexposed, and very green in tint. Here is some advice. One, check out the Waterfalls thread in Landscapes, it has some really good tips in there for waterfall photography, exposure, and types of filters to use. Two, shoot in RAW!!!! Not sure if these were RAW's originally, but it gives you much more control over you white balance in pp, and allows you to recover shadows and highlights a bit better than JPEG. That being said, I don't know if you would be able to pull the shadows up here without adding a ton of noise, as it looks like your histogram would have been blocked up on the shadows pretty bad. Polarizers and proper exposure will really help with keeping from blowing the highlights and exposing the shadows without blowing highlights when shooting waterfalls. Also make sure you pick the right time of day for shooting waterfalls, as the sun can really wreak havoc on reflection off the face of the falls. So I try to shoot them either at sunrise, sunset, or overcast days. Overcasts almost work the best, as the light is even, and not reflective. Also there is a lot of info out there on the net about waterfall photography, FAQ's and tips. Check Luminous Landscape, and other forums also. The lightning shot while a neat capture of lightning, doesn't blow my hair back because of the foreground. I know this is kind of a get lucky thing with lightning, but try to find a more dramatic foreground, especially one without as much light pollution. Hill or mountain tops, maybe a park, if there is an observatory near you that might be cool also. Maybe a lake of some sort the next time there is a storm with lightning would be a stronger foreground for this type of work. There are some internet lightning trackers out there also, to tell you when and where and frequency of lightning strikes throughout the country.

Here is one that I use:
http://thunderstorm.vaisala.com/explorer.html

-Andy