The Glory Hole

[Loose Canon]

Alllllllllllllrighty then!

Let's see if I can pull one out of my hat! Hopefully I found the right place to post this! I just stood back and tossed a dart at the forum page. Now, not only am I working on a laptop with a horrid display, but it also now has a crack with a dart sticking out of it! Actually, I think its an improvement!

This is the “Glory Hole”. Close to the Buffalo National River in Arkansas, USofA. Which, as everybody knows, is a suburb of New Zealand!

If anyone would care to rake it over and offer some C&C I would certainly be eternally grateful. No worries, just let ‘er rip! It should be quite obvious that I could use all the help I can possibly muster!

All the Best,
Terry

[Loose Canon]

Well what do you know!

I think my good friend Mr. Tom Petty put it best: "Even the Losers Get Lucky Sometimes"!

Now if you all will excuse me for a moment, I think I'll go out on deck and do a Happy Dance!

[rick55]

Hi, Terry: welcome to CiC!

You certainly did more than get lucky with this shot. It's beautiful: exposure is wonderful, in what looks like really tough conditions. Dead sharp, too. The only nit I could possibly pick is to suggest that you might clone out (assuming you're using photoshop) the leaf on top of that large rock in the lower right corner: it seems a bit distracting to me.

Out of curiosity, did you also try any shots with faster shutter speed, maybe get more of a "frozen action" look to the water? Not a criticism by any means, just wondering what else you might have experimented with in this setting.

Cheers,
Rick

[Klickit]

Don't have my rake with me atm - not much room for one in the bus - but what kind of lighting is there in the hole? Looks like some water reflection on the rock roof there, but the whole image is much lighter than you'd expect from an underground situation. I quite like the leaf, as it reminds me that there is an outside world very close. Nice one, Terry.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Terry,

Kit's query about the lighting was my first thought too, so I looked up the EXIF data for clues, which I paste in here for all to see;

Camera Maker: Canon
Camera Model: Canon EOS 50D
Lens: 17-50mm
Image Date: 2010-05-18 09:47:19 -0500
Focal Length: 17.0mm
Aperture: f/11.0
Exposure Time: 6.000 s
ISO equiv: 200
Exposure Bias: none
Metering Mode: Center Weight
Exposure: Manual
Exposure Mode: Manual
White Balance: Auto
Flash Fired: No (Manual)
Color Space: sRGB

I also see (from elsewhere) you shot it RAW (good) and use PS Elements 8 (I use 6, so I'll say "good" here too).

I am guessing this is under an overhang and there is open air/sky behind you, possibly even with the sun shining in, mainly onto the lower foreground, which being light coloured, is throwing it up illuminating the "ceiling" bits which are not themselves edge lit by the sun. Am I close? If I am right, I suspect the optimum lighting angles don't last long, so you were in the right place at the right time, possibly waiting for the latter to occur.

I feel I should offer some suggestion for improvement, but it's not easy (well done); upon close examination with a lot of browser zoom to get a huge image to be able to scroll around and compare falling water (not the light beams) to vertical edges, I think it might stand a smallish clockwise rotation. However, this isn't a biggie and assumes there was no wind from left to right blowing the water off vertical.

I can see why you are pleased with it, I would be too.

Have you got the dart out yet? LOL
(a 'bullseye', btw)

Cheers,

[arith]

I do like exif, don't know why everybody doesn't include it. The picture is great, I just don't get to see things like that.

[Loose Canon]

I just thought it was miraculous that I even got the shot posted to the site!

Rick, Dave, and Steve? I’d like to thank each of you for taking the time to give the photo the once-over. I’ve been privileged to see works from each of you and I consider it an honor that you would take the time to give me the benefit of your expertise. Coming from you guys it means a lot to me and it does not go unappreciated.

I’m going to chalk that shot off to “Beginners Luck”. So there is only one thing left to do. Since I might have gotten a decent shot off, guess I might as well just print it, frame it, hang it, sell my gear, and call it a day! Just my luck, too! Right when I qualified to have my own signature!

Rick, I did try a couple of shots at slower shutter speeds with little success. I’m not experienced enough yet to really judge how my DoF is going to play out before I shoot. I did try opening the lens up, but I wanted everything in there to be in focus and thought that if anything needed to be soft, it would be the light/water coming through the hole. So I really was unsuccessful at stopping the falling water and I didn’t try real hard to do so.

You are right on the $$(US) as regards lighting, Dave. No surprise! It is not a completely subterranean environment. It is indeed an overhang/undercut and there is not much light in there at the time of day this was shot, which was early AM. The sun was not at the point that it was shining into the overhang yet and wouldn’t be for a while. It was more above the roof giving me some nice light burning through the hole but still somewhat indirect. I also think that the water flow, though not much, helped to bring some light down through the hole for me. One thing I wanted to try to avoid was using my onboard flash. Its all I have at the moment anyway and I thought (hoped?) I could pull it off with all natural. Dave, being in and around water most of my life, there is to me, nothing worse than looking at a “downhill” lake when it should be level. Or viewing downstream with an upstream tilt. Drives me nuts! So I tried to level the pool as much as my eye and grids would allow and let the chips fall where they may on the falling water and everything else. The water flows through the hole at different angles and I may not have been exactly looking parallel at the drop. To tell the truth, it never even occurred to me to consider the falling water for rotational purposes so I’m glad you made me aware of that.

I knew where the “right place” was, but no idea the “right time, so I was on the trail with my 35 pound day pack at daybreak. Was a couple of mile hike in there and since it is in Arkansas, it is uphill both ways! I am sitting on “Go” to get back in there after a deluge if I am home from work. The hole will completely fill with water from the stream above and rip through there. I’d like to be there when it does.

I have a couple of questions if I may, please? How does one go about finding the EXIF and “other” data on photos posted here? For the life of me I can’t seem to find it on my own.

And Dave? Should I be worried that you know so much about what I am doing and what I am doing it with? Are you Big Brother watching?

[rick55]

Hi, Terry;

There are various tools for viewing EXIF data in a web browser. I use FxIF in Firefox. I don't have anything installed in IE, since I don't use that for CiC. If you right-click on an image in a folder, under "properties," the "details" tab has some basic information. For more details, I either look at it with Firefox, or use exiftool. It's a bit on the complex side, but I like the power.

Cheers,
Rick

[Loose Canon]

Hey Rick,

Thank you for that, sir. I have Vista here and OSX at home. I'll look into this some more. For some strange reason I thought that to view the data for photos posted on here that it would somehow be some kind of function of this site.

Guess that's what I get for thinking!

[Hans]

And Dave? Should I be worried that you know so much about what I am doing and what I am doing it with? Are you Big Brother watching?

:-) Must say I felt the same when Dave did that to me...almost violated :-) But he seems a decent trustworthy gentleman so don't be too worried.

Love this shot. I actually thought it was a compositon thrown together in PS when I first saw it. Nice job. I like the leaf...a little sign of life.

[carregwen]

Hi Terry

It's a very good shot. Great scene. I do find the bright areas at the top and bottom a little too bright. If you put the shot into Photoshop RAW editor they come out as blown. Hardly surprising really as the conditions look very difficult, and you handled it well. I did a quick edit, if that's OK, to correct the blown areas. I put the shot into RAW edit and used the recovery slider to pull back some of the blown areas. I then used the mask tool (CS4/CS5) to darkened the whole of the bottom area. You can now see more detail in the light and water areas. Good shot.

Before, and after.

[Loose Canon]

Whew! Thanks Hans! I guess I can quit looking over my shoulder and take my foil hat off now! I was starting to get a little nervous!

Rob, you are a total wizard, man!

And of course its okay. In fact, I feel very fortunate that you would take the time to do so to show me what else can be done to improve this photo. I know you didn’t do it for your benefit and I appreciate that.

I have “rerun” some shots through ACR, but obviously didn’t on this one. And just as obviously should have. My bald head is kind of swimming with all of this photographic sensory overload and I find myself sometimes overlooking some of things that I actually know to do! And those things are precious few! But its all for the good!

Side by side, I can see a vast improvement in the “scree” or the bottom area and can see the hole light cooled down as well. I’m not so sure how far I can trust my eye at this point, but I kind of like the original light coming through the hole. But blown is blown and that is pretty much the shape of that! I also notice maybe a tad bit of saturation difference between the two? Would the original maybe be a bit oversaturated? Remember, I still have a dart sticking out of my cracked display!

Regardless of what I like or don’t like, the point I am getting here is that I need to be more aware of these things and make a better attempt at staying on top of them. You have my undying gratitude sir for bringing that home to me. Probably won’t be the last time I need bringing home, either!

Next step? Back to the ole drawing board with this one to see if I can duplicate or at least simulate those results.

[Loose Canon]

Welp, I gave it a shot. Not really sure, but may be a bit of improvement.

I don't have a masking tool in PSE (or at least that I have ever been aware of), sooooooo...

Ran the original psd back through the RAW editor, cooled down the highs by recovery as recommended, left the exposure as is. I was kind of surprised that there was no more blown than what was indicated, it didn't seem like all that much and they seemed to recover nicely.

Smart brushed the bottom scree area as "darken". Blending mode- multiply. Why? No idea. Just "phaffed" with it a bit until I thought it might do! (Sorry Dave. Saw that in one of your posts and fell in love with it. Must be a technical term!) Eased off a bit on the opacity. Backed off the saturation a tad, and cooled the color just a touch.

Resized & sharpened as recommended. Not to beat a dead horse here, but I kind of wanted to see these side by side on the webbernet. I had them up side to side in the editor, along with Rob's version.

I don't know if I am getting any more detail with what I have done, but I think I like the second version better than my first anyway.

Thank you all for the inspiration. It's looking like at some point I am going to have to throw a big BBQ and invite everybody over for BBQ and cold one's to somehow repay!

Can't wait!

[carregwen]

Terry

Big improvement, I think. The shot looks much more balanced in terms of exposure, and the light shafts look more subtle. One way to have fixed this in camera would have been to use an ND grad filter upside down (with the dark area at the bottom). It's a good shot.

[Loose Canon]

Thank you Rob.

Any improvement I am crediting to you. I have actually been considering an ND Grad lately. Well, maybe one to start, anyway. I posted a question in the General Photography thread regarding this that has been on my feeble mind!

[Dave Humphries]

I have a couple of questions if I may, please? How does one go about finding the EXIF and “other” data on photos posted here? For the life of me I can’t seem to find it on my own.

For the "other", please just go to;
Jeffrey's Exif Viewer
It is THE most complete one I know of, no installation required, it is just a website.
Just paste anyone's image URL into the top box, or
Navigate to a file on your HDD in the lower box.

If you want to, there is also a little plug in you can install by simply dragging the "Exif" button onto to browser toolbar from the webpage I linked, see pink box on right.

I got the info that I pasted in off one of the Firefox EXIF plug-ins, probably one of the two Jeffrey links to.

No intention to freak people, but better you know it's there - or not on some occasions when you want it to be

Cheers,

[Loose Canon]

No way, Dave! That is Awesome! And easy (easy is good). Thank you so much.

That Jeffery knows more about me than I do myself!