The Mountains & the Mist III & IV

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Originally Posted by Sahil

Stunning shots, Colin.
I wish we had an option like that of 'Favourite' on flickr, so that we can get back to personal favourites anytime we want...

What are those small objects on rocks? Snails?
& could the same results be expected without filters?

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Thanks Sahil,

Just save the thread as a favourite in your browser :)

Yes - sea snales.

Not impossible without filters, but very difficult - one could bracket, but I'm doing that for the second shot anyway (12 x 1 min) and the light is changing constantly, so quite tricky, although the under-exposed top 1/2 wouldn't need any extended exposure time. Personally, I find it easier just to just it right in-camera.

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Originally Posted by Wirefox

As you may have picked up from some of my posts I am not a great fan of fluffy water and shiny rocks but the combination of the predictable with the stunning back drop makes the images outstanding. I have a preference for the second image but that is splitting hairs. Remember everyone that Colin shoots with large prints in mind and you can only image the impact of these images in that format.

So I think fluffy water has its place provided it is combined with something that contrasts sharply with its inherent benignity. Here the sharp almost pen like lines of the backdrop with bold colour create a perfect contrast. Best fluffy water shots I have seen Colin and the only ones I would hang behind my IKEA leather sofa:D...only kidding

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Thanks Steve,

Who knows if they'll ever get printed on a large canvas - to be honest, I was feeling a bit like the old saying "when all is said and done, a lot more gets said than ever gets done" -- so I really just wanted to go shoot something ... ANYTHING! So for shots like this I just come up with a plan I think might work, and then work my tail off trying to GET it to work. Often I just don't know until I get back to the computer and have a look at them in detail.

By the way, what IS an IKEA?

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Originally Posted by Colin Southern

By the way, what IS an IKEA?

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A Swedish based furniture store. You assemble the furniture at home. :D

http://www.ikea.com/

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Originally Posted by Donald

Aye, they all surrender eventually!

Water-boarding. Fluffy water. Either one always gets them.

Nice stuff, Colin.

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Thanks Donald,

I know it's a technique that's been done to death, but I still keep coming back to it :)

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Originally Posted by georgem

I can't decide. I rely like both. Maybe the first, because of the two mtn ranges. Beautiful work!

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Thanks George,

I like both too :)

Such nice pictures!

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Originally Posted by epmi314

Well done. Tough to pick one over the other. They are both great images. Sensual is a well choosen adjective.

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Thanks Scott,

It still seems like an unusual term to me, but thanks anyway! :)

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Originally Posted by KeithH

Stunning images Colin, perhaps #1 by a whisker :)

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Thanks Keith :)

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Originally Posted by Camellia

It's the curves of the rocks. Very pleasing on the eye and so are the colours.

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I must be doing something right then - that's what I was aiming for!

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Originally Posted by FrankMi

A Swedish based furniture store. You assemble the furniture at home. :D

http://www.ikea.com/

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Ah - thanks Frank. They dodn't appear to have them in NZ, which is probably why I haven't heard of them before.

Looks like nice stuff, but in terms of leather, I think I'll stick with my $4000 Danske Mobler Stressless chair http://www.danskemobler.co.nz/main/stressless :)

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Originally Posted by Colin Southern

I think I'll stick with my $4000 Danske Mobler Stressless chair

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How in the world??? Ah. That explains it. I had been wondering how it is that you appear to be on the forum 24 hours a day. Now I know! LOL! If I had a chair like that I might never get out to shoot! Very nice! :D

Pretty cool shots Colin :)
Did you add any vignetting to the second image?

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Originally Posted by FrankMi

How in the world??? Ah. That explains it. I had been wondering how it is that you appear to be on the forum 24 hours a day. Now I know! LOL! If I had a chair like that I might never get out to shoot! Very nice! :D

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Nah - it's at the workshop (you didn't think I'd let the kids anywhere near it did you?).

The secret to being online here "24/7" is that things come through to my iPad / iPhone :)

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Originally Posted by speedneeder

Pretty cool shots Colin :)
Did you add any vignetting to the second image?

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Thanks Brian,

Off memory, I balanced it up a little, but I was deliberately shooting so that the brightest portion of the sunset was in the middle.

I notices on a couple of shots with a GND filter that this happens. (such as my Colinesque shot). I was wondering if this was normal.

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Originally Posted by speedneeder

I notices on a couple of shots with a GND filter that this happens. (such as my Colinesque shot). I was wondering if this was normal.

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The GNDs won't cause vignetting, but they will make it more obvious, as our eyes are more sensitive to changes in darker tones.

Technically it's not so much "vignetting" as it is "light falloff" - it's typically seen to a far greater degree with wide-angle lenses.

Thanks for the info :)

Surreal comes to mind-These are wonderful photos. ..a standard to aspire to. I recently got myself a 10-stop ND hoping to get some photos just like this although I note these were taken almost,if not wholly in the dark at f22 - just need to get to the coast now after trying it out on a lake here- I quickly discarded the shutter stops compensation chart and went with the LCD screen.

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Originally Posted by JohnC

Surreal comes to mind-These are wonderful photos. ..a standard to aspire to. I recently got myself a 10-stop ND hoping to get some photos just like this although I note these were taken almost,if not wholly in the dark at f22 - just need to get to the coast now after trying it out on a lake here- I quickly discarded the shutter stops compensation chart and went with the LCD screen.

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Hi John,

Thanks for the kind words. Yes, it was getting pretty dark by the time I'd finished (walking barefoot over these rocks - in near dark - carrying a camera, tripod, and a couple of camera bags was "entertaining").

Basically, long exposures give a number of effects ... on mostly flat water a long exposure will smooth things out, but with breaking waves it'll give you a mist effect. It's important to get a good exposure, but the actual length of any given exposure doesn't matter too much as one can simply stack multiple images together to give a psudo-longer exposure (off memory, one of these was 12 x 1 min exposure) (the advantage of this over a single 12 min exposure is that it gives me more chance to fine-tune the exposure - better noise reduction - and (hopefully) a keeper if I have to abort the shoot due to water splashing on a filter etc.

If you want to make life easy for yourself though, pop along to www.singh-ray.com and grab a Vari-ND ND filter - they're about a zillion times more versatile that a fixed attenuation like the 10-Stop. With it you can simply dial in the aperture you want, and then adjust the Vari-ND to get the shutterspeed you want - it's like a "dimmer control" for the sun :)

Thanks,Colin. They're quite expensive- I paid NZ$180 for my 10-stop and thought that was a lot..I do have an f22 'taken in the dark' photo I took last October in Cornwall but I wouldn't want to detract from these photos by letting you see it in this post. I'll dig it out.I have a Cic folder with the photos I've posted so I don't duplicate anything if an occasion arises - it's not there along with another long(ish) shutter speed photo so it hasn't been posted. I'll do it now for the cc. I need to look into this stacking that people do,pp isn't my strong point.I see photos of the moon that they say have been stacked ,that and bringing 3 exposures together. I'll check in the CiC tutorials,I expect the answer may lie there.