Yet another monochrome long-exposure photograph (YAMLEP)

[EOBeav]

I spent a great afternoon yesterday on a local river taking pictures for about 3 hours. Summertime definitely does not suck where I live.

I just wanted your general thoughts about composition, appropriate amount of water motion and effectiveness of b/w conversion in this image. Any other comments that add to some good discussion are also welcome. Oh, and I know the water in the foreground is pretty bright, but not exactly blown out. Should I have toned it down just a little more?


A River in Eastern Oregon by Rick.Scheibner, on Flickr

EXIF:
Camera Canon EOS Digital Rebel XSi
Lens: Canon EF 17-40mm f/4 L
Exposure 0.5
Aperture f/16.0
Focal Length 17 mm
ISO Speed 200
Exposure Bias 0 EV

[AndrewPDX]

Hey OR buddy! Cool shot. I think the foreground is definitely the strongest part of this picture. The long exposure water looks great. In fact, I love the whole thing all the way up until the shoreline at the top 5th of the image. That mess of undergrowth in b+w is just so uninteresting. Maybe crop away the top half of the undergrowth (but don't lose that little jut of land in the upper right, that's great)?

Also, just a question (as opposed to a critique), but what are you going for with the b+w river? When I think of rivers, I think of lush, colorful landscapes. When you pull the color out, you're changing what you want the viewer to focus on. What are you hoping to pull off with your choice on this shot?

[EOBeav]

Thanks for the note, Andrew. After doing this for a few years now, I'm kind of trying to strike out on my own artistically. I don't want to just copy the work of others now, and this is a look I'm moving forward with. The two rivers I've been on recently (Walla Walla and Umatilla) are green this time of the year, but I wouldn't call them lush. They look different out here on the east side than they do in the gorge or in the valley. I'm trying to capture the motion and direction of the water as well as the textures of their surrounding rocks and vegetation. By going monochrome, I'm stripping it down to those bare essentials. It's a different look, but one that I'm trying to approach with some artistic integrity. I'm trying to improve and perfect that approach. I think I've got the water down, but I still need to work on bringing out the tones in that kind of vegetation.

Your comment is in line with a lot of others I'm getting: Water looks great, the upper bank, not so much. I'm probably leaving too much of that area in my shots, and in some cases can leave it out altogether. In this image, I think I can crop to an 8x10 leaving as much of the top part out as possible.

Thanks again for the comments and question.

[Doug Sundseth]

I like the exposure time you picked here. It's long enough to blur the water some and short enough to still show texture. (This assesment is unaffected by the fact that I've been shooting in the same range -- really. )

I don't think you should knock down the brightness of the water. White water needs to look white in a B&W image.

For composition: I like the line of rocks running from the middle left to the bottom just left of center. I might try to get them to be a bit more diagonal across the frame, but that would depend on what's out of frame here. I really like the bush on the rock as well. I think you might want to try to avoid having so much white water right at the edge of the frame. If you can frame just a bit more loosely so that the darker water forms the frame of the image, I think that will help the composition.

I'm ambivalent about the far bank of the stream. If it were more diagonal, too, I think the relatively even gray would work pretty well with the composition. Since it's pretty straight across the top of the image, I think it fights with the dynamism of the water.

HTH

[milosh]

I'm ok with the amount of water movement, b&w conversion and the brightness of water. I agree with other's comments about the upper part and I'm wondering if it would be better if the camera was even lower and more tilted down...
Doug's comment about bright water on the edge of frame is spot on!
Btw, hasn't 99% of stuff we can think of already been done in photography? I have a feeling that what ever comes to our mind can be interpreted as copying of someone else's work.

[EOBeav]

Originally Posted by milosh

Btw, hasn't 99% of stuff we can think of already been done in photography? I have a feeling that what ever comes to our mind can be interpreted as copying of someone else's work.

Valid point. I understand that what I'm doing is hardly original, but the reason I'm doing it is for my own purposes, and not to just copy what other people are doing. Before, I might say, "Hey, there's a snow-capped mountain with awesome clouds taken at sunset. I want to go do that very same thing." Now, I'm just trying to develop my own signature look, bringing it down to a more personal level where it belongs. Hopefully that makes sense.