One light, from low tide to high.

[Donald]

Just to add my compliments, Gary. A wonderful group of images. They stand scrutiny both individually and as a set. Pictures to study and learn from for those wanting to learn about managing and using light and how to expose to get the very best from a scene.

[Wayland]

Thank you Donald, and everyone else as well. I'm glad you like them.



The last of the series.

High Tide.

[Mike Buckley]

I don't think I've ever seen a thread that demonstrates as effectively as this one the concept of working a scene.

[Manfred M]

A great series; Gary.

I don't get too concerned about the purists, as they tend to argue arcane points of the scene and tend not to care if the image is actually any good. It looks like lack of maintenance is going to ensure that you are going to have some ruins to shoot at some point in the future.

All that being said, your shots nicely demonstrate how a single subject can have many different and successful interpretations.

Nicely done!

[Brownbear]

As always from you, exceptionally beautiful and inspiring images!

[depthcharge101]

Stunning pictures I must say. Are these single exposure or HDR?

[Wayland]

I don't use HDR very often, I tend to find it a bit of a blunt instrument.

There are a variety of techniques in use on this set and that reflects my normal working practices quite well.

First of all I should state that I always shoot RAW and almost always exposed to the right of the histogram. As an old silver negative worker I know it doesn't matter what the negative or base file looks like just so long as it has the maximum information available.

I process the RAW files in LightRoom and then carry them into PhotoShop as smart objects for more controlled editing.

Picture One stated as multiple frames. The base image is exposed and processed for the sky. Taken at 6400 iso. 20 seconds on a Samyang 14mm at f/2.8

The other frames were taken at 400 iso. With the camera fired by a remote control for 5 second exposures at f/4 and illuminated with a flash unit triggered by hand to paint the scene with light.

The frames are then masked and blended as layers in the lighten mode to give the final result.

Pictures Two and Three are pretty straight forward shots although the smart objects were reprocessed in PS with the ACR filter to squeeze a bit more shadow detail out. I do double process like this quite often and the extra headroom available from an ETTR file is very useful there.

Shot Four is about as straight as it gets for me. Single shot just as the sun cleared the horizon. Shot Six was also a simple exposure but using a ND to allow the water to move a bit.

Shots Five and Seven were focus stacked images. I needed particular shutter speeds to create the water flow effects I wanted and that meant I could not stop down enough with the ND filters I was using to get sufficient depth of field in a single frame so two frames, one focussed on the foreground and one on the light were manually blended as layers in PS.

[Wayland]

A great series; Gary.

I don't get too concerned about the purists, as they tend to argue arcane points of the scene and tend not to care if the image is actually any good. It looks like lack of maintenance is going to ensure that you are going to have some ruins to shoot at some point in the future.

All that being said, your shots nicely demonstrate how a single subject can have many different and successful interpretations.

Nicely done!

I often wonder about such purists. They seem to disregard all the inherent unrealities created by photography and bleat on about minimal processing all the time as if it's a virtue.

I used to hear the same kind of rhetoric from people who only shot transparency film instead of taking control of their own images in the darkroom.

It's not voodoo. It's just using the available technology to render your impression of the scene, just as an artist with paint and an easel would choose the elements that told the story of a location over a period of time.

My general response is "Get over it.. Nothing you see in a picture is real, it's just an image."

[depthcharge101]

I don't use HDR very often, I tend to find it a bit of a blunt instrument.

There are a variety of techniques in use on this set and that reflects my normal working practices quite well.

First of all I should state that I always shoot RAW and almost always exposed to the right of the histogram. As an old silver negative worker I know it doesn't matter what the negative or base file looks like just so long as it has the maximum information available.

I process the RAW files in LightRoom and then carry them into PhotoShop as smart objects for more controlled editing.

Picture One stated as multiple frames. The base image is exposed and processed for the sky. Taken at 6400 iso. 20 seconds on a Samyang 14mm at f/2.8

The other frames were taken at 400 iso. With the camera fired by a remote control for 5 second exposures at f/4 and illuminated with a flash unit triggered by hand to paint the scene with light.

The frames are then masked and blended as layers in the lighten mode to give the final result.

Pictures Two and Three are pretty straight forward shots although the smart objects were reprocessed in PS with the ACR filter to squeeze a bit more shadow detail out. I do double process like this quite often and the extra headroom available from an ETTR file is very useful there.

Shot Four is about as straight as it gets for me. Single shot just as the sun cleared the horizon. Shot Six was also a simple exposure but using a ND to allow the water to move a bit.

Shots Five and Seven were focus stacked images. I needed particular shutter speeds to create the water flow effects I wanted and that meant I could not stop down enough with the ND filters I was using to get sufficient depth of field in a single frame so two frames, one focussed on the foreground and one on the light were manually blended as layers in PS.

Wow thanks for the detailed explanation. That is really insightful!

And don't worry about the purists; they just have not realised every professional pictures out there (that they may have loved too) has probably undergone some form of post-processing. As long as we aren't doing photo-journalistic work (where the portrayal of reality is important), I don't see any problems in post-processing.

[dedro]

great photos Gary