Inside the Ice Canyon

Marc,

 

I really like some of your recent additions. This one caught my eye in particular. The one thing I'd like to get better at is hiding the transition when using ND grads, especially when there is a V-shaped transition between light and dark, as there is here. I see you've used a 2 stop hard and a 3 stop soft, yet the transition is hardly discernable. Would you mind sharing your techniques for filter placement? Is it mostly filter placement, or do you rely on post processing to hide the transition? If so, what PS tricks do you use?

 

Thanks for the input...

 

-Anish

Intriguing shot. Looks like a difficult exposure. How about a bit of a story about how it was taken? What vantage point was this shot from? Certainly very eye-catching!

Really magic and dificult Marc....great work, you are one of the best and a lucky man. Great portfolio, congrats and best regards

OK. This thing was a ridiculously difficult exposure. I would venture to say, probably the most difficult I have ever captured sucessfully. Not only were icy drops steadily raining/blowing down on me and my gear, but as you can see the dynamic range needed to pull it off was at least 6-7 stops. I used the 3-soft GND across the body of the canyon. The natural range was about 3-stops difference from top to the water at the bottom. I used the 2-hard pulled down on top to about the opening. The filters were sandwiched and hand-held, allowing me to move them up/down slightly during the exposure when helps reduce grad-lines during exposures. I also dodged slightly (but never to the point of damaging the image). All this work and the image still required a blend to retain the late-day color in the clouds above the falls. I bracketed the exposure in 1-stop incriments and blended the cloud and sky portion from an identical image -1 stop taken almost simutaneously. The image is listed as "Unmanipulated" because I feel it is a fairly accurate rendition of what I saw at the time of capture and all adjustment was made in the interest of keeping a natural appearance.

Thank you for the details Marc. One aspect that stands out about your work is how everything seems perfectly exposed when the dynamic range seems impossible even with the use of ND grads. You mention blending a double exposure in this scene; is this a technique you have used in other photos? I ask because I would like to know what is possible with a single exposure. I am currently trying to push my technique without having to resort to the use of merging exposures. Once I find my limits I will consider using this.

I have used it on other photos, but sparingly, and on no other images seen in my galleries here. Like you, I try to push the boundries of what's possible without spending extra time in PS.

Glacier's Triple Falls from the inside out in Winter.

Wish you would have allowed ratings 7/7 anyway a most intriguing shot

What a stunning shot!!!!

As mentioned above, I wish you had allowed rating!!!

7/7

Incredible! You have a fantastic portfolio as well.