User_2000406

I disagree with Zaki and Don. 

The sun is not shining.  There are bright areas in the sky near the horizon but they do not cast well-defined shadows due to the light source being *very* diffuse. 

Reflections are visible in the stream in areas where floating vegetation does not block them, and these reflections include portions of the sky and of the two trees.  The locations of the  reflections of the trees are determined by perspective, not by light in the sky, and thus are located directly below the trees rather than off at an angle as might be the case if they were shadows.   These reflections are arbitrarily bounded and limited by floating vegetation and dry land.  There is enough brightness in the sky for leaves sticking up above the water in the stream to shine brightly with specular reflections but this is *not* due to direct sunlight falling on the leaves.

The arbitrary limits to the reflections created by the floating vegetation may create an impression of a disconnect between the distance and the foreground but this is a false impression caused by not understanding what light is doing in the scene being photographed.   Whatever adjustments may have been made in post, the photographer appears to have captured natural light patterns and to have done so in a very appealing composition.

I love the arrangement, the colors, the forms, the textures!  The lighting really works well.  Wow!

Hi Teresa,That's a pretty scene and a nice composition! The reflections and lighting provided by nature are great. I like the way the dock leads the eye into the photo. I would have (if possible) moved a bit to the right to create more visual separation between the dock and the land to the right. Also, the photo is very slightly tilted to the right (so easy to do!) but this can be fixed in various photo editing programs.

This exposure is difficult due to the great contrast between the relatively bright light of the sunset and the much darker areas in the foreground. What you can even do will depend on the dynamic range of the digital camera or film you are using. I would have bracketed the shot to get a range of exposures because it's hard to know at the time which one will offer the best balance between different elements in the photo.

Probably the most important thing to expose correctly here would be the bright part of the sunset. This probably had more color in it than is now visible- it looks overexposed, with the colors somewhat faded. The same is true of the reflection of this part of the sunset in the water. At the same time you don't want to lose the much darker reflections in the middle ground because they add so much to the photo. Given a choice between getting one or the other of these two right, you should expose the sunset correctly because that's what the dock leads the eyes to, with the reflections being admired along the way. If you shoot in RAW you can then process the image later to improve the rendition of the darker areas and bring the photo into better balance between the sunset and the reflections.

The best exposure solution would have been putting the camera on a tripod and using HDR to merge the best parts of several exposures (not that I've even done that myself yet), but in reality we often happen upon special moments like this without warning and we just have to use what we have available at the moment.

I'm still learning too, especially in how to use digital!