Flowing Water

[Matthew]

My first attempt at shooting flowing water. I shot this with my TZ5 P&S placed on a rock. Some pp added to boost the colours.

[Dave Humphries]

Very good first effort Matthew, well done.

[Colin Southern]

Pretty good job all round if you ask me

Only comments I'd make are ...

(1) that you've over-cooked the saturation a bit (greenery is (a little) too green, rocks are (lot) too brown),

(2) that rock at the bottom towards the right spoils the composition a bit.

Hope this helps

[Yan Zhang]

Matthew,

Nice work. Can you tell your shooting information, such as exposure time, ISO, aperture, etc?

Thanks,

Yan

[Matthew]

Pretty good job all round if you ask me

Only comments I'd make are ...

(1) that you've over-cooked the saturation a bit (greenery is (a little) too green, rocks are (lot) too brown),

(2) that rock at the bottom towards the right spoils the composition a bit.

Hope this helps

Agreed I over saturated but never thought of the rock until now cheers

Matthew,

Nice work. Can you tell your shooting information, such as exposure time, ISO, aperture, etc?

Thanks,

Yan

F/8
ISO 100
Exposure Bias -1
Shutter Speed 1.0s

Cheers

[crisscross]

Will try a question rather than a comment

Have you ever seen any water that looks like that?

If not, why do you want it to?

[Lincs1]

Will try a question rather than a comment

Have you ever seen any water that looks like that?

If not, why do you want it to?

It all seems a matter of taste and fashion here, milky running water seems to be in vogue at the moment whether it be a fast flowing river or the sea, I think both have their place. May be it is "the artist" coming out with their license.

Just my two pennyworth

Lincs1

[Matthew]

Will try a question rather than a comment

Have you ever seen any water that looks like that?

If not, why do you want it to?

No but it does show the motion don't you think?

[crisscross]

No but it does show the motion don't you think?

We had a club competition recently with the theme 'movement'. The judge was particularly coherent and I think the summary was that we knew that water was moving even in 'frozen' stills just as we knew that apparently stationery planes in the sky must be moving. Movement blur only seemed to be helpful in cases where things might or might not be moving without it, eg flywheels and piston shafts on machinery....and was admissable on parts of birds in flight where it was impossible to totally freeze 'the lot'.

I put comment as questions; agree with Nigel that we all need to express ourselves in our photos....but do we need to express or follow fashions set by others that sometimes go on longer than their solid content justified?

[atvinnys]

hm...I wonder what you think about the fake HDR look that is so common those days (not that I like it anyway....)

There may be a tendency to capture water with those long exposure times a little too often, but I like it in general and that's just me.
I think that this is a technique that one can actually use for other things and like any other techniques, one needs to practice.

[ajith.rajeswari]

Hi Matt,
Nice shot. For the same shot I would have changed the WB to more the warmer side may be 6K or so to get a good colored rock than color saturating.
My 2 cents
Not an exact sample but to show the rock's color ..



~Ajith

[Colin Southern]

Will try a question rather than a comment

Have you ever seen any water that looks like that?

If not, why do you want it to?

I think a big part of the "issue" is that the camera just doesn't see things the same way our eyes do. Early morning shots are a lot like that - our eyes see a ripple on the water, but the captured scene is dead smooth because it was necessary to use a long exposure because their simply wasn't enough light to go to a higher shutter speed ... and the OTHER big variable is that the human brain doesn't REMEMBER a scene how it was anyway (we tend to remember more contrast and colour than was really present).

[Matthew]

Hi Matt,
Nice shot. For the same shot I would have changed the WB to more the warmer side may be 6K or so to get a good colored rock than color saturating.
My 2 cents
Not an exact sample but to show the rock's color ..

~Ajith

Thats a nice shot with nice vibrant colours and a good point to make about the white balance thanks

[Colin Southern]

Thats a nice shot with nice vibrant colours and a good point to make about the white balance thanks

Keep in mind also that you can often use the flowing water as a neutral reference (to get the white balance set) and adjust the temperature from there. Personally I sometimes go for a slightly colder temperature to put a hint of blue in the water. The other thing I always seem to find in these sorts of shots are grossly over-cooked greens - sometimes it's good to give the image an overall boost and then drag back the saturation of the "greens" by reducing the saturation of the yellows in a hue-saturation-brightness layer (or wipe over them with the sponge tool set to desaturate).

[Matthew]

Keep in mind also that you can often use the flowing water as a neutral reference (to get the white balance set) and adjust the temperature from there. Personally I sometimes go for a slightly colder temperature to put a hint of blue in the water. The other thing I always seem to find in these sorts of shots are grossly over-cooked greens - sometimes it's good to give the image an overall boost and then drag back the saturation of the "greens" by reducing the saturation of the yellows in a hue-saturation-brightness layer (or wipe over them with the sponge tool set to desaturate).

Colin, do you always set your white balance in field or do you sometimes do it in pp?

[Colin Southern]

Colin, do you always set your white balance in field or do you sometimes do it in pp?

Hi Matthew,

I NEVER set it in the field - for me it's an exercise in futility because I mostly shoot sunrises and sunsets and the temperature changes rapidly during these times (plus you seldom want accurate WB when shooting dawn / dusk landscape).

When I DO need colour accuracy though, I'll shoot a gray card whilst at the scene, and apply in post-processing (it's heaps faster than trying to do it at the time -- only takes a few seconds to shoot the gray card and a few clicks to appy it to as many photos as I want). My personal opinion is that custom white balance products like ExpoDisc are a waste of money because they're too limiting and too time-consuming (try using one when you're using on-camera fill flash and see how you get on!)

[Matthew]

Hi Matthew,

I NEVER set it in the field - for me it's an exercise in futility because I mostly shoot sunrises and sunsets and the temperature changes rapidly during these times (plus you seldom want accurate WB when shooting dawn / dusk landscape).

When I DO need colour accuracy though, I'll shoot a gray card whilst at the scene, and apply in post-processing (it's heaps faster than trying to do it at the time -- only takes a few seconds to shoot the gray card and a few clicks to appy it to as many photos as I want). My personal opinion is that custom white balance products like ExpoDisc are a waste of money because they're too limiting and too time-consuming (try using one when you're using on-camera fill flash and see how you get on!)

Thanks for the explanation with so much to learn this is one less thing to worry about

[Colin Southern]

Thanks for the explanation with so much to learn this is one less thing to worry about

No Worries.

It really come down to 2 things ...

1 - Adjusting WB in PP is easy, if ...

2 - You have a spectrally neutral reference (eg gray card) (I use a whibal card).

... so don't worry too much about getting WB right in camera - but if white balancing is important, make sure that you get an accurate reference shot.