Reflections of Beauty

When the right light and right location come together the results arenothing short of spectacular. While shooting at Beauty Creek we raninto cloud formations that produced some of the most brilliant lightdisplay of our trip to Canadian Rockies. I have to give credit to ourhost Darwin and Samantha for showing us this location.

Technical Details: To capture this photograph I used a 0.9 Hard EdgeGND filter. Because I was shooting looking directly into the sun, evenwith a 0.9 ND filter I had to bracket my shots. These bracketed shotswere combined using our iHDR workflow to bring out the colors anddetails in both the sky and reflection.

 

 

Absolutely breathtaking! Beautiful dramatic lights and lovely composition. Best regards, Linh Dinh

This is so perfect , Amazing

Just an amazing image. Exelent composition, colors and reflections. Rgrds. I. Feliciano.

Beautiful shot! 7/7

 

 

Beautiful image!

Great composition, and a nice description of a wonderful experience. For me, it's a bit disconcerting to see details of the mountain in its reflection but not in the mountain itself. Similarly, to be true to life the reflections of the clouds should be as dark or darker than the clouds. Still, this is very nice.

That rock in the middle though looks like put in the picture! It maybe should be cloned out!

 

PDE

Jay, the rock should stay I believe. I think you meant for it to be there, so it is an artistic choice and a good one from my perspective. I do agree with Stephen, though. I no longer use grad filters, instead I just blend bracketed exposures. I think this provides more control. This is an extremely tough lighting situation, not many understand how difficult it is to render properly. You have done an admirable job holding the sky, but I do agree that the lower half should be a shade darker to give the image a believable balance. No doubt, this is an epic capture on your part!!

This is really spectacular. Wonderfully composed. Best regards.

NOW YOU"RE TALKING!!!! CONGRATS ON THAT STUNNER MY FRIEND..WOW

Perfecto trabajo. un gran control de la luz.

beautifully reflected golden light Jay.

A beautiful image! It goes to show that a centered horizon can work, under the right conditions.

Jay an amazing image! I think that the rock actually gives this image a special depth. I like seeing the ghost of it under the water as well. The beauty of nature is strongly presented here. Congratulations.

Amazing sky and reflex, this colors are really beautiful, thanks for share

Well don !! Nice capture ..Beautiful light ..Good composition and colors .........................Best regards

Beautiful location and light spectacle.

 

I like your composition too. The only little thing I would try to change is a location of that rock in the foreground. I would personally try to put it in the lower right corner, but that's more to do with my personal taste.

 

When it comes to technical side I'm afraid you've lost a bit of 'natural feel' by using such a strong grad filter. Well - to be honest - if you still had to bracket your shots there was no point of using a grad in the first place. Manual blending or even gentle HDR in a scenes like this can give you much better results than traditional filtering (no side effect first of all).

 

Anyway - good stuff

Greetings from rainy island :)

Piotr

Stunning light and strong composition, Jay. The reflections are a bit too bright, IMO. I would suggest perhaps lightening the upper half of the image and darkening the reflections slightly. Otherwise great.

 

Regards,

Christoph

You echo my thoughts there, I was thinking the same thing. Its lacking balance, the upper part of the picture is slightly darker then the bottom half. This is especially noticable in the reflections below the main mountain and also on the far right were the land above the reed bed feel too dark.

 

Them pesky grads again.... but enjoyable none the less. :)

I've been guilty of the same "grad problem" mentioned above in a few of my photographs, too; it is a valid concern. If you were really motivated I know you could pull a little more detail out of the mountain and subdue a little of its reflection, but I truly do not think that it is necessary. It is a personal decision that one needs to make. If this represents the impression that you had standing there at that moment then you should leave it alone. The boulder in the FG anchors the shot, in my opinion, and is a nice touch.

 

I'll be visiting the area to the south of this (Glacier NP) next month. To come back with something as nice as this would make me one happy fellow! Regards.

Great shot! Congrats.

 

MV

Combination of transmitted and reflected light often creates a perceptions that the reflection is brighter then the source. This is particularly true in dark areas of the sky as seen in the bottom of the vertical image. In this image there is almost no reflected light from sky allowing us to see through the water.

Having said that I am well aware that some of the areas of reflection are slightly brighter then it source...and it was my choice to leave it that way (I could have corrected them if I choose to do so).

Does technical perfection make for more print sale?? To this regard here is an interesting blog post by Darwin Wiggett: http://darwinwiggett.wordpress.com/2009/06/20/hdr-follow-up/

Thanks for taking time to comment.-Jay

Very strong compositionally. The strength and drama of lines and masses complement the dramatic color very well. I like the dynamism between the radiant lines from the sun and the sweeping lines of the mountain.

with Darwin's view regarding being too concerned with technicalities, Jay, and with your choice regarding this photograph. It was a good choice. As I alluded to above, I had some flack when I posted some images that had similar "problems". One draws a line between absolute precision in recording and creative interpretation. Not that these are mutually exclusive, one can have both if the subject allows, but I have found that the final product is oftentimes more enjoyable if one leans towards the latter.

 

An example of one of my problems (and I have a few) is my most recent upload, a sunset from an urban setting with lamp posts. Had I color corrected the lamp posts so that they would have been a more expected color the image would not have had the impact that it does. I made some 16x20 prints of this image and I think that they are very salable, but the market is the final judge in that area. Regards.