“Live Oak, Spanish Moss and Marsh at Sunset”
Canon 5DMarkII f2.8 16-35mm zoom II @ 16mm ISO 200 f11@ 1/3 sec combined with f22@ .7 secs Skidaway Narrows / Skidaway Island
Canon 5DMarkII f2.8 16-35mm zoom II @ 16mm ISO 200 f11@ 1/3 sec combined with f22@ .7 secs Skidaway Narrows / Skidaway Island
Hi Craig,
Love the technique that you are using. Beautiful shot here.
One question, are you bracketing each of apertures and then choosing the best pair of frames?
Cheers,
-bill
A fantastic moment, Craig. Haven’t seen many images of this scene before so this is probably one of a kind. I really like the depth created by the large tree limb in the foreground and the marsh in the midground and then the sun star in the background. I also love the glow on the moss that the low sun has produced. This capture should satisfy your photographic soul greatly.
Wes
I see a lot of tangled graffiti in the water. Then there are the straight vertical stabs of the reflection of the grasses. Followed by the fuzzy narrow vertical triangles of the Spanish moss dripping from the tree. And in the midst of all this is the little bright jewel of the sunstar. Gorgeous!
Hey Everybody,
Thank you for being here and thank you for your support. Its deeply appreciated.
Bill – hope this finds you doing well. Here is the answer to your question.
Q: “Are you bracketing each of apertures and then choosing the best pair of frames?”
A: The combination here of an f 11 and f 22 shot was for the sunstar. The smallest aperture gives a much more well defined sunstar and I knew when I was creating the picture I wanted a sunstar to be an important part of the composition. The problem with stopping down to f 22 for a better sunstar is a loss of sharpness due to diffraction…..so the only thing I layered into the image from the f 22 frame was the sunstar itself. Before that I did use two bracketed exposures at f 11 to create the base for the image. The reason I don’t mention that in the technical data on my blog is because of space and time and because that work does not involve layering or compositing to effect the editorial content of the image. In the case of this shot there was one more frame at f 11 that was bracketed to protect the highlights. I put that image on top of a bracket at f 11 that was exposed for the shadows and used a technique in PS that makes bracket blends of very complicated scenes quite easy. After combining those two layers I then layered in the sunstar. I then did about another 45 minutes of PS work to deal with local contrast and color……Craig
Good Morning Craig,
Thank you for the detailed answer. Makes sense to me. I love this shot and the colors are perfect.
Kind Regards,
-bill
Craig, you wrote: “In the case of this shot there was one more frame at f 11 that was bracketed to protect the highlights. I put that image on top of a bracket at f 11 that was exposed for the shadows and used a technique in PS that makes bracket blends of very complicated scenes quite easy.”
I hope that some day when you do a Daily Critique or some other teaching video, that you’ll explain how to do this “quite easy” blend. Now that I finally have CS5, I’d like to know more about stuff like this that can’t be done easily with CS3 (which I still have, to help me out when I get frustrated with CS5, lol!).