Evening at Deserted Harbor

Herr_Raus

Hi All,

This is my first post here.. I went out last saturday evening to take some shots of the nearby harbor (Antwerp).
I'm not artistic at all, but I'm trying to come up with better shots.

That evening I knew I made 2 major mistakes:
- I had Vibration Reduction on while using a tripod!
- I forgot to take off my UV filter.

I came up with the following shots, none of them are edited. All are taken with my Nikon D5000 + 18-105 Nikor lens.

jsqueri

I like the lines in #2.

In 1 and 3 I think I'd either go with a faster shutter to freeze the water or a much slower one to blur it out completely.

Welcome to Dgrin

jackiejay

Nice set 1,2 are my favs great nightime shots

Herr_Raus

Thank you for the feedback both.

I will try it again, maybe this weekend. A longer exposure time would mean that the picture would be much brighter, unless I can decrease my aperture, right? Sadly the Aperture is already at it's lowest. This would mean I have to make it darker again using lightroom for example?

Hinson

Ya know, I'm thinking that #1 would be a prime candidate for an HDR shot. Five exposures at one stop intervals, ranging from -2, -1, 0, +1, +2
This would give you much more ambient to open up the background, nice lighting for the harbor and stopped down for the bright highlights. Here's an example I did quickly in PS4. You could do much better using the original raw files and Photomatix or similar program.



And this brings up a question. Is it ok to edit others photos like this for illustration/example purposes? On another forum I frequent, each member has the ability to turn on or off the "editing ok" note under the avatar. Not sure about dgrin.

Herr_Raus

I actually shot this scene with 3 shots at an interval of 2.. I'm not really good at Photomatix though, I should read up on it.

btw I don't mind you using my pictures though..

jsqueri

A longer exposure time would mean that the picture would be much brighter, unless I can decrease my aperture, right? Sadly the Aperture is already at it's lowest.

You're right, you would need an ND filter, but why are you shooting at the smallest aperture?

Also, what are the effects of moving subjects like water in multi-exposure work like HDR?

Herr_Raus

Well I gave HDR a shot, and here is what I came up with.. I had a hard time creating a HDR image without the yellow/orange colors in the foregrond spoiling the picture tbh..

You can see here what effect water has on HDR, at certain points, where color changes, you see a disruption, like he doesn't know what to do with the different images.. (hard to explain).

jackiejay

wow to me much better

Hinson

Herr_Raus wrote: »

Well I gave HDR a shot, and here is what I came up with.. I had a hard time creating a HDR image without the yellow/orange colors in the foregrond spoiling the picture tbh..

You can see here what effect water has on HDR, at certain points, where color changes, you see a disruption, like he doesn't know what to do with the different images.. (hard to explain).

Much, much better. Great redo