Afterglow Deconstruction

It is a beautiful, delicate image. Nicely done. Dan

That purgatory state between wakefulness and sleep. Beautiful.~~~~~L

Beautiful. A pictorial representation of the line, "Life is but a dream...."

It is Beautiful !!!

Hola Gordon.

 

Nice feeling of loneliness on top of a mountain. I like and enjoy it a lot.

 

Abrazos.

lovely. i could float away on this one

.... for the wonderful comments. If I gather up your collective impressions I arrive at a dreamy delicate and lonely beauty, which is precisely what I hoped to convey looking out at these islands after the sun had fallen from the sky.

 

Dan; thanks for leaving such a nice comment on the featured member page. Poetic is something I try to aspire to with my photos.

Gordon, this one sings. I assume that you have lightened it up quite a bit to get the softer light? How long was the exposure?

Hi Jeff;

 

The exposure was 4 seconds at f 22. The camera was tripod mounted and leveled with the horizon. I had the rotation of the head slackened so I could pan during the exposure. For part of the exposure I left the camera stationary and for the remainder I panned from side to side repeatedly in a narrow arc. The hope was that I could get the islands to register faintly during the stationary portion of the exposure then paint the muted tones of the afterglow over them with the motion. This was the best result I came up with.

 

This is pretty much straight from the camera with a bit of curve adjustment and some exposure balancing . I did not lighten the image. I did make a few test exposures before taking this shot. I bumped up the exposure in camera to get the histogram well to the right of center.

 

I've attached a straight shot of more or less the the same scene at the same time with the camera stationary and 0 EV adjustment.

Gordon, thanks. The straight shot is exactly what I would have expected. I have been pondering how to get softer colours in sunset shots, but haven't experimented yet, having been away for the last six weeks.

 

The movement has really worked to create the blurred effect here in quite a short exposure. My blur is mostly from length of exposure, as I am almost always at ISO 50. I look forward to experimenting with your technique if the weather ever improves,

Jeff this was shot at 100 ISO. If I had ISO 50 I would use that :-)

I like this and it is very soothing. However, I like the 'straight' shot a lot more. In fact, I rather love it! Maybe it is less 'original', but, it is very well achieved and beautiful to boot.

Ian;

 

I like them both myself not least of which because they evoke two separate moods from the same source material. I am not apposed to taking a straight shot when one presents itself and likewise I often enjoy and admire well conceived and executed, even if conventional, photographs.