My goodness, what luck! With the holidays I had a number of days off, and I went out shooting the morning each one of those. On this particular morning I was hoping to get a scene that would work well with the light layer of clouds moving across the sky, and the early morning light.
I have a variable ND filter that gives me about 6.5 stops, which was barely enough. At 32 seconds, I couldn't really get much more exposure time without starting to blow out the sky. I really need a graduated filter...
This particular spot is a favorite of mine, and has been featured in a few entires in the past. But this is the first time I shot it with a long exposure, and I really really like the results. The water here is constantly moving (which is why it's open), and normal exposures show that roughness. But this long exposure evened that movement out and made a glass like surface, which isn't what I was expecting. I was instead expecting to see a cloudy water surface, which is normally what you see with long exposures of water movement.
With some tweaks to clean it up, I then ran it through Topaz DeNoise and Topaz Adjust 5, which is where the magic happened to really make this image shine.
Statistics
Place: 8 out of 64 Avg (all users): 6.5612 Avg (commenters): 8.0000 Avg (participants): 6.2273 Avg (non-participants): 6.7158 Views since voting: 1473 Views during voting: 344 Votes: 139 Comments: 15 Favorites: 2 (view)
I don't think you can attribute this to luck - it's a very fine, professional capture. The focus, light, clarity and exposure are right on and the scene is beautiful. Congratulations on the top ten, Mike. Very well deserved.
Winter imagery is always difficult as trees are bare and contrasting color is hard to find. Plus, most photographers have trouble with making snow white rather than blue. This is a good example of how it should be done - lots of nice pleasing colors, the mood is peaceful and relaxing and the snow is white. Very nice image - I'd like to see it place in the top ten.
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