Mountain Stream

rwells

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jiro

Wow. This is an awesome shot. Very well done, Sir! thumb

NewEnglandMoments

X-Lent water Shot, love the motion , and controlled well... perfect blend of speed on this for me to obtain that cotton candy water appeal.. The color in the shot is also beautiful, and I love the Rocks placed in bottom right corner for depth...

Richard

Great composition, color and silky water. Beautiful shot, Randy. But why didn't you lower the white point?

WernerG

Great Shot! Thanks for leaving the EXIF on, Randy. I'm trying to learn this type of water motion shot by looking at shutter speeds. Your choice of 1/6 s. seems to be the most pleasing for small cascades like this. I've tried 1s to 1/2s and the water seems to lose its internal flow trails and becomes a big blur. 1/6s seems to be the sweet spot, clear sense of motion and flow and the internal flow lines are distinct.

Do you use other speeds for waterfalls, ocean waves, etc?

black mamba

Terrific shot, Randy. You captured this one really well.

Tom

rwells

jiro wrote: »

Wow. This is an awesome shot. Very well done, Sir! thumb

Thanks jiro!

rwells

NewEnglandMoments wrote: »

X-Lent water Shot, love the motion , and controlled well... perfect blend of speed on this for me to obtain that cotton candy water appeal.. The color in the shot is also beautiful, and I love the Rocks placed in bottom right corner for depth...

Tom,

Thank you for your articulated comments!

rwells

Richard wrote: »

Great composition, color and silky water. Beautiful shot, Randy. But why didn't you lower the white point?

Thanks for the comments Richard,

but now I'm curious ~ why do you think the white point should have been lowered? Are you seeing blown whites on your monitor?

I purposely dodged and burned the stream to give it more contrast/life, especially where the sunlight dappled through the trees onto the stream. I could not monitor any blown highlights via the eyedropper in LR3.

Inquiring minds want to know

rwells

WernerG wrote: »

Great Shot! Thanks for leaving the EXIF on, Randy. I'm trying to learn this type of water motion shot by looking at shutter speeds. Your choice of 1/6 s. seems to be the most pleasing for small cascades like this. I've tried 1s to 1/2s and the water seems to lose its internal flow trails and becomes a big blur. 1/6s seems to be the sweet spot, clear sense of motion and flow and the internal flow lines are distinct.

Do you use other speeds for waterfalls, ocean waves, etc?

Hey Werner,

Thanks for the nice words!

I also like the way 1/6sec rendered this stream, but remember, some of that is also contingent on the speed of the water flow.

About waterfalls and ocean waves:
As I rarely ever shoot with a tripod, and I don't frequent those places much, I'm not a good person to ask this of.

Matter of fact; this shot was with my camera in my hands, steadied on a rock

rwells

black mamba wrote: »

Terrific shot, Randy. You captured this one really well.

Tom

Thank you Mr. Tom

WernerG

Thanks Randy, I usually carry a monopod on my camera pack and when shooting with a stabilized lens I can reliably get down to 1/4s and down to 1/2s with maybe a 50% success rate. I shoot a burst and hope for the best.

Richard

rwells wrote: »

Thanks for the comments Richard,

but now I'm curious ~ why do you think the white point should have been lowered? Are you seeing blown whites on your monitor?

I purposely dodged and burned the stream to give it more contrast/life, especially where the sunlight dappled through the trees onto the stream. I could not monitor any blown highlights via the eyedropper in LR3.

Inquiring minds want to know

No, no, it's just the opposite--the whole image seems too dark to me. Perhaps I didn't express it well. By lowering the white point, you force lower input luminance values to output pure white. That will brighten the image and increase contrast throughout the range. I sent you an example by PM .

rwells

Richard wrote: »

No, no, it's just the opposite--the whole image seems too dark to me. Perhaps I didn't express it well. By lowering the white point, you force lower input luminance values to output pure white. That will brighten the image and increase contrast throughout the range. I sent you an example by PM .

Ah, well if that was your question, here's the reason:

I wanted the stream to be the main character in this image. I wanted to maintain the context of the woods, but for the stream to be "coming out" of the woods, almost like a cave. I am fully aware that this is not how my eyes perceived the real scene, but it does fulfill my goal for this image.

I really appreciate your time and effort to C&C the image, and also to be kind enough to go above and beyond by sending me more info.

Thank you


Edited to note: Richards suggestion does indeed look nice, but just isn't what my goal for this image was. Thanks again Richard!

Sam

Randy,

I like the capture but really feel it's to dark. In keeping with your stated intent, I wonder how it would look if you dodged, masked, increase exposure, brightened the river. Start at the top and increase the brightness as it flows down towards the bottom of the image. The river would start at it's curent brightness and increase as it travels through the image.

Sam

jiro

Randy, is it OK if I play with it a little bit?
The image is already that great to start with. Reading all the posts, I thought I'd put a twist to it a little bit. My idea is that I'll brighten the top central part where the river seems to originate (to have a point of focus), brighten the water a little bit, and then crank up the contrast a little bit to add some bite into it.

Something like this. Hope it's not offensive to you. All in all, your image is really captivating to me.

snowman1

Very nice, well done.




Doug




http://dougsphotos.smugmug.com/

Panther

Howdy Randy,

What a wonderful image, so real and life like I can almost
hear the rushing waters of the stream.

I really like the way you've chosen to display this image,
it adds strength and sense of movement.

Very Nicely Done!!!