Waterfalls today

[Sean]

I took these photographs today at Garigal National Park to experiment with a slow shutterspeed, exposure and running water.

Well had some problems trying to keep stuff dry, tied an umbrella to my tripod to keep my gear dry, turned my back for a second and it took off and landed in deep water. Got it back though Micro trekker worked well, had to blowdry all of my equipment when I got home.

Took a while to work out the right exposures on site.

In PP just stuck to my staples, Levels, Brightness/contrast and Sat. Used adjustment layers for added control as there is both ends of the brightness scale.

Pretty happy with the results however would appreciate your thoughts
Regards
Sean


Sigma 18-50mm @ 50mm- F32-1/8sec-Spot metering-Manual setting

Sigma 18-50mm @ 50mm- F25-1/6sec-Spot metering-Manual setting

Nikon 28-80 @ 80mm- F36-1/4sec-Spot metering-Manual setting

Sigma 18-50mm @ 24mm- F25-1/6sec-Spot metering-Manual setting
Sigma 18-50mm @ 50mm- F25-1/6sec-Spot metering-Manual setting

Nikon 28-80 @ 80mm- F10-1/100 sec-Spot metering-Shutter priority

[SoCal Steve]

The images are very nice, Sean. That's something I've always wanted to try but have never gotten around to.

IMO just a little more PP will make them real winners. My suggestion would be regarding the yellow-brownish color cast in the water in several of the pictures. Neutralizing the yellow with levels adjustments, color balance, or some other method would make the water look more pure and the pictures more sparkling and beautiful. IMO just a little slower shutter speed would have also been even better, but I realize that that might have been impossible without a neutral density filter or a lens with an even smaller f/stop.

[sirhc55]

Sean - 2 things come to mind: one, you are very game to go out in wet weather to take pics. Two, thank god you did - very good shots and I agree with Steve on the colour balancing.

[SoCal Steve]

You might want to try desaturating just the Yellows in the image with Photoshop: Image>Adjustments>Hue/Saturation>Yellows and either desaturate or lighten the value. Again- just IMO.

[darb]

what others said about the colour ... what white balance did you use?

the rocks look a bit blurry, and the composition isnt too appealing, but good job either way, still well captured.

[Matt. K]

Sean
Your images are missing a bathing naked nymph. Excellent shots but I tend to agee that there is a touch of colour in the water that needs to be removed. Try this trick in PS....make a rectangular selection of part of the water and go to HUE/SATURATION. Now pump the saturation up until you can see a colour appear. Now go to COLOUR BALANCE and add some of the opposite colour. Let me know if that works for you.

[darb]

i just had a quick mess around in PS with yer image ;

[Matt. K]

Darb
Well done! You are "colour" skilled! Which brings up an interesting fact that Japanese women who used to work in the pearling industy were much coveted by Pro Photo Labs because they had an extremely high sensitivity to colour. They were skilled at grading pearls and colour balancing photographs.

[xerubus]

some great shots there sean... well done.

cheers

[Sean]

Thankyou all for your comments, would you believe when I boosted the hue/sat I also orginally boosted the yellow seperately as I thought it made it look more natural.

After reading everyones advice I have updated the orginals from my site so the ones above should show my updates .

Thanks SoCal Steve for kicking off the review your comments were spot on with the colour and have helped me heaps.
You were right about the exposure points too, with that light I was at the limit, 200 iso - small apertures (got a bit mudled with the exposure comp)

Thanks Matt K for your tip, I did try it out however I managed to do the job a bit easier this way, reduced the Yellow in Hue/sat on an adjustment layer more than I originally boosted. Then I had to paint the vegetation back to life, at this point I just removed the remaining yellow with the sponge tool.

Darb thanks for working the image, It appeared that you had also sharpened the image. I ended up doing this to all the images and improved them IMO alot better.

I remember having a thin glaze of mist on everything so sharpening repaired much of the image integrity loss.

Thanks to Sirhc & Xeribus for your kind words too

I will proberly go back there tomorrow as I am told there is a bigger water fall 400m down the track

Regards

Sean