Rocks have too much shine?

[Prue]

Canon 50D
ISO 100
f/22.6
0.6s

I took this shot on the weekend at our fav camping spot. I was trying to get depth in the shot. This weekend was my first try at using a tripod and playing around with things.

Do you think that the rocks have to much shine?

Composition?

any tips?

[flytyer57]

Wow. Can a rock that is wet not be shiny? That is a good question. Unless you dried them off before taking the picture, I don't think you can do anything about it.

But the rocks are not what I would concern myself with. Just above the stream, over on the right side of the picture, you have some major blow out. There is also some blow out of the water in the stream.

You said this was taken @ f22.6 with a .6 second exposure? How did you manage to get that water so silky smooth with such a short exposure? Usually I need to go to a full second to get that much smoothness.

I would definitely add a filter of some sort. A circular polarizer or ND filter for a shot like this. It would allow you to open your aperture some and take a longer exposure. A filter would also help with the blown out parts of the photo. Shooting in high sun times is hard. I always add a filter of some sort when shooting outdoors during times of high sun.

As for composition, I think it would be fine if that right side wasn't all blown out which leaves the mind wondering what is over there. Maybe a little more cropping could help. The four corners of this photo seem a bit bright too. A touch of vignetting might help draw the eye into the center of the picture more.

Just my 2¢.

[Doug Sundseth]

A circular polarizer can kill much of the reflection from a wet rock. Sometimes that helps; sometimes it hurts. Here, I think it might help, but the image you captured is really quite nice already.

[wal]

Overall it is a nice composition..I like the way that the trees curve into the frame above the rocks and all with all that lively colors and all.. The shadows and lights adds some interesting contrast as well to the picture.. Nice picture accept maybe you might want to think about the overblown exposure to the far right.

[BK553]

The blown sky is more distracting

[Prue]

Thanks for the comments. I'm new to photography and don't know anything about filters, so lots of tutorials to start reading. Your all right, it is blown out in spots. I'm looking forward to getting back there to improve on these shots. Easier to get it right the first time rather than trying to fix PP

[Krusty79]

I agree that the blown out parts of the sky and in the water are more of an issue. For these type of shots, I would always shoot RAW and bracket your shots. That will give you a lot more flexibility in PP like exposure blending or HDR.

I also wonder if your shutter speed was longer than .6 seconds.

[EOBeav]

.6 is actually a good exposure time for stuff like this. My best crick shots are taken between .5 and 1.

My suggestion: Since this is a camping spot, come back in the late evening when you don't have sun directly shining on it. Use a circular polarizer, and turn it until you get rid of that shine and remove the glare coming off the water. Point your camera down and go wider so that we get more of the crick and less of the sky (it's blown out as it is).

Thanks for posting, I look forward to seeing more of your shots. Keep up the good work.