Driftwood, Loch Lomond #1

[Donald]

Now that I've got the Singh Ray Vari ND to play with, I look to find the opportunities to use it. This old bit of tree root was sitting on the shoreline just along from the cottage in which we were staying for the weekend. I loved it's knarled shape. Obviously been floating about in the loch for a long time.

Put my skills at applying hyperfocal distance to the test. Had my little chart out and was quite careful in my measurements. The log is about 8 inches (200mm) from the lens at its nearest point. Ben Vorlich, the mountain at the back right, is about 12 miles (19.3kms) away. The trick was to get them both in focus.

Comments and criticism always welcomed.


Canon 40D, Tokina 11-16 f2.8 @ 11 mm. ISO100. 30s @f16. Singh Ray Vari ND

[John 2]

I like that Donald. The mono treatment suites it particularly well. You're making good use of that Tokina.

[dje]

Donald I've just bought a Sigma 10-20 and am looking for inspiration how to use it to it's best advantage. I think you've given me an excellent example. The wide angle works well with this I think. Not only is the foreground object given considerable prominence, but there is a great sense of depth at the rear of the image with the converging mountains and the wonderful clouds.

Maybe I can find something similar !

Dave

[Smudger]

Donald - Nice work on this one. It really works well and that filter seems to be nice too. I love the sky. Was any additional work done to the sky in Post, such as a rradial blur or was this soley down to the LE. Nice job. Great work.

Dave - You will love the sigma 10-20mm and thses types of shots are where they really work well. The trick is to get down low to the water / FG object and get a good focos on the object. If you cant find an object in the nice scene, look around for any natural materials and go, pick it up and place it exactly where you want in the frame to make it work.

I look forward in seeing some results from you Dave. Happy snapping.

[Donald]

Thanks for your responses.

As you say, this is the sort of scene made for an ultra wide angle lens.

Was any additional work done to the sky in Post, such as a radial blur or was this soley down to the LE.

No blur. That's just down to the longer exposure. In fact it was quite windy and the clouds were moving quite fast. Even the old bit of wood was rocking ever-so-slightly with the waves coming in on it. But, as you can see, the 30-second exposure flattened all those out.

In terms of skies, what I have discovered is the Detail Extractor filter in Nik's Colour Efex Pro 4 plug-in. It's the best thing I've found for allowing the detail in a sky to be brought out to its best. It's very, very easy to go over the top with the filter sliders and end up with something that looks completely over tone-mapped. It's very much a case of learning that less is more. It's a different take on Dodging and Burning on the sky

So, with this, as with others that feature clouds in the sky that I want to bring out, I'm going into Colour Efex Pro 4 and using this filter via Nik's Control Point system (so that I'm only affecting the sky), before then going to Silver Efex pro 2 for the B & W conversion.

[Smudger]

Very good.

In terms of the NIK Filter, I only have the version 3 Pro and not the 4. I dont think version 3 has this filter.
I will take a look. Thanks for the info. Like most things in Photoshop or any other processing software, it is very easy indeed to over do things. Good work DOnald on this one.

[Mike Buckley]

Wonderful photo. For me, it's the combination of the tree limb and the rock, not just the limb, that make the image complete.

Thanks for explaining the Detail Extractor in Color Efex Pro. I may license the Nik suite of software.

[Donald]

Thank you, Mike.

Yes, I think in the end that large rock worked in the image. I really looked at the composition for a long time and actually have one (that I am not so enthusiastic about) that is from about 10/12 inches to the left and excludes the rock, with that left end of the wood pretty close to the edge of the frame. But it was one of those where I really did work the location and the composition to get what I thought worked best. The light was starting to go (this was at 9:40pm) and I needed to not waste too much time.