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This is a beautiful little corner you've found in the city, and it was a really good idea to stop and take a picture.
However, you seem to have had one or two technical problems in taking hte picture, manual exposure notwithstanding.
Overall, this is distinctly overexposed, and the water and some of the leaves have burnt out. With manual exposure, you still need to compensate for conditions, and apply the equivalent of "minus compensation" - deliberately underexpose compared with a general reading, or take a spot reading from a midtone in the picture.
And sometimes, the brightness range is jsut too much, and the sensible thing is to crop the frame, whihc i've done in my mod. I've also darkened the whole thing, to get a more natural-looking range of brightness. There's nothing I can do about the blown highllights, though.
Finally, I reduced the saturation. This is partly a matter of taste and perception - I prefer colours a little muted. (It's possible that you've got the camera set to "high colour" or "bright", but many cameras tend towards garish rendition.)
However, you seem to have had one or two technical problems in taking hte picture, manual exposure notwithstanding.
Overall, this is distinctly overexposed, and the water and some of the leaves have burnt out. With manual exposure, you still need to compensate for conditions, and apply the equivalent of "minus compensation" - deliberately underexpose compared with a general reading, or take a spot reading from a midtone in the picture.
And sometimes, the brightness range is jsut too much, and the sensible thing is to crop the frame, whihc i've done in my mod. I've also darkened the whole thing, to get a more natural-looking range of brightness. There's nothing I can do about the blown highllights, though.
Finally, I reduced the saturation. This is partly a matter of taste and perception - I prefer colours a little muted. (It's possible that you've got the camera set to "high colour" or "bright", but many cameras tend towards garish rendition.)
A very nice discovery in the city, Diego, and you have obviously considered your composition in order to create impact, having some overhanging foliage on the right, featuring two falls of water, and including some rocks for a contrasting texture against the water.
The falls could be any size, and that's the beauty of an image like this. A small fall can look really large.
The light was not in your favour at that time of day because it has caused burn-out, not only on parts of the water, but more noticeably upon the foliage. Check your camera's LCD after taking each photograph to ensure that the water's highlights are not getting 'blown out' like this.
If you choose to return to the creek, try going at the beginning or end of the day, when the light is less intense. Also, an overcast day can work in your favour. At the same time, consider trying for a lower viewpoint, if that is at all possible, because this makes the waterfall more dominant.
Your chosen shutter speed has given your water a nice look, not too milky, and your aperture has given you sharpness throughout, except for the foliage on the right, which was closer to your camera.
You were right to reduce your camera's sensitivity to its lowest setting, using ISO 100.
I have done a modification using your full frame image because I like the composition so much, but the amount of work that I have done on this is not ideal. It's far better to get things right in-camera.
I dealt with the burnt out areas by cloning detail into them, and removed the two leaves at the bottom because I felt they were distracting.
I then simply did a few contrast adjustments, which is far more effective once the highlights have been removed.
Pamela.
The falls could be any size, and that's the beauty of an image like this. A small fall can look really large.
The light was not in your favour at that time of day because it has caused burn-out, not only on parts of the water, but more noticeably upon the foliage. Check your camera's LCD after taking each photograph to ensure that the water's highlights are not getting 'blown out' like this.
If you choose to return to the creek, try going at the beginning or end of the day, when the light is less intense. Also, an overcast day can work in your favour. At the same time, consider trying for a lower viewpoint, if that is at all possible, because this makes the waterfall more dominant.
Your chosen shutter speed has given your water a nice look, not too milky, and your aperture has given you sharpness throughout, except for the foliage on the right, which was closer to your camera.
You were right to reduce your camera's sensitivity to its lowest setting, using ISO 100.
I have done a modification using your full frame image because I like the composition so much, but the amount of work that I have done on this is not ideal. It's far better to get things right in-camera.
I dealt with the burnt out areas by cloning detail into them, and removed the two leaves at the bottom because I felt they were distracting.
I then simply did a few contrast adjustments, which is far more effective once the highlights have been removed.
Pamela.
Hi Diego. To follow up on whats been said already, I have uploaded a screen capture from Photoshop.
It shows the histogram for this image, and also, the over exposed areas are highlighted in the image in RED.
These areas are called "blown" and cannot be recovered, as they contain no detail whatsoever.
When you exposed the shot, you used multi-segment metering, which will give you an average exposure value for the scene, some of this is dark; so the very bright areas would be "hidden" by this metering approach.
So you need to use a metering approach that uses the bright water as a reference, and gives you a better exposure. In this case, you exposure would have been quite a bit shorter, more like 1/10th second. Or use f/16 with the same shutter speed for blurry water. This would be a darker image, more like what John (dudler) has uploaded, but the water would be exposed correctly, and have detail. The downside is that the image overall would be darker.
So to do this again, look for a time where the sun isnt directly falling on the water, - cloudy or overcast, and try again.
regards
Willie
It shows the histogram for this image, and also, the over exposed areas are highlighted in the image in RED.
These areas are called "blown" and cannot be recovered, as they contain no detail whatsoever.
When you exposed the shot, you used multi-segment metering, which will give you an average exposure value for the scene, some of this is dark; so the very bright areas would be "hidden" by this metering approach.
So you need to use a metering approach that uses the bright water as a reference, and gives you a better exposure. In this case, you exposure would have been quite a bit shorter, more like 1/10th second. Or use f/16 with the same shutter speed for blurry water. This would be a darker image, more like what John (dudler) has uploaded, but the water would be exposed correctly, and have detail. The downside is that the image overall would be darker.
So to do this again, look for a time where the sun isnt directly falling on the water, - cloudy or overcast, and try again.
regards
Willie
