A golden creek at sunset

[TwistedAmnion]

Just getting back into photography from a long absence. This is the first sunset picture Ive taken and I want to know if if I did a good job or if there were other things i needed to consider.

Camera Pentax K110D
Exposure 0.167 sec (1/6)
Aperture f/22.0
Focal Length 55 mm
ISO Speed 200
Exposure Bias 0 EV
Flash Off, Did not fire
Orientation Horizontal (normal)

BTW this was taken from underneath a bridge, and no the bridge wasnt photo worthy.

[Doug Sundseth]

The first thing I see when I look at this photo is the blown-out sky. It's by far the brightest thing in the image, it's quite large, and it leads my eye out of the photo.

The water in the photo works fairly well (though I'd warm it a bit if I were doing the processing).

The subject you've chosen has a huge dynamic range, significantly beyond what a camera sensor can capture, I'm afraid. I think you might do better to:

* Drop the exposure to recover detail in the sky and accept that much of the unlit detail will go to silhouette.

* Crop to remove much of the sky, but then you'll lose the buildings.

* Use an ND Grad filter, which might allow you to get detail in the sky and the water, but will take the buildings to silhouette.

--or--

* Use some sort of HDR technique to hold detail in both the sky and the shadows.


You've chosen an interesting subject, but it's technically difficult.

[theeventof]

Definitely agree with a lot of what Doug said.

The easiest option would be to do the HDR technique (even if certain people think it's cheating) as long as you know what you're doing when you process the shot it's really the easiest way to capture this kind of scene in my opinion.

ND filters are definitely not the cheapest filters on the market and you've got to ask yourself if this is a scene you're really going to be photographing a lot or is it a one time thing.

And of course the cropping aspect, this scene really doesn't lend itself too well to be cropped any more than you already might have. I like the sky placement, and the river definitely will lead you into the photo.

Hope this helps! Good luck!

[TwistedAmnion]

Thank you for the input. This is a spot where i will be doing alot of practice since it is walking distance from my place. I tried the the hdr effect, but it didnt do much to the sky and created artifacts on the water.
I dont have an nd filter yet, but would my polarizer make a difference?
I was mad at myself when i realized i left the filter at home.

[kcoppock]

Originally Posted by TwistedAmnion

Thank you for the input. This is a spot where i will be doing alot of practice since it is walking distance from my place. I tried the the hdr effect, but it didnt do much to the sky and created artifacts on the water.
I dont have an nd filter yet, but would my polarizer make a difference?
I was mad at myself when i realized i left the filter at home.

When you say the HDR "effect", what did you try? If you're just using a single exposure, there's not much you can do. In terms of true HDR, you'll need multiple exposures from the exact same position, usually -2EV, 0EV, and +2EV exposures.

[TwistedAmnion]

i had around 6 different exposures, when i tried merging them together in post production it created an unnatural color effect on the water like the rainbows in oil. The sky was overexposed in all the exposures even when the water wasnt visible.

[kcoppock]

Ah okay, so you might have just not had a dark enough exposure for the sky. An ND or ND grad filter would probably be useful for that. Using HDR tonemapping is iffy, cause you will get a lot of unnatural looking effects if you're not careful. If you took it from a tripod, sometimes a better method is to just stack the exposures as layers, and then just mask out the parts you want. Ends up looking a lot more realistic in my opinion, but how well it works depends a lot on the subject and lighting.

[Doug Sundseth]

You could use a polarizer to kill the reflection in the water ...

Your problem is that there's probably something like a 15 stop difference between the sky and the shadows. You need to compress the range being used in your shot (by using HDR/tonemapping, by pulling up the shadows and pulling down the highlights in post*, by selectively filtering, or by cropping out the really dark or really light parts) or accept that parts of the shot will be solid white or solid black (or both).

Whatever choice you make will determine how you need to shoot.

* I didn't mention this before, but you can get some extra dynamic range if you pull down the highlights and pull up the shadows in post. This works best if you shoot in RAW at your camera's biggest number of bits per pixel. There's a limit to what you can pull back, and if you pull too hard you'll start seeing pretty strong noise effects and posterization, but it's another option. FWIW, even though it usually isn't thought of as HDR, this technique is an HDR/tonemapping method.

[TwistedAmnion]

Thank you everyone for the input. I have learned alot today from your suggestions and follow up research. I especially learned how expensive gnd's are. Now i got to find out the difference between the expensive and generic brands, and if i can rig a sheet filter holder myself.

One of the coolest links i came across was Patrick Smith's flickr stream which had all of the photo details listed