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Steel Blue Sky
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| [Note Guidelines] Photographer's Note |
After a long day of work, I decided to go on a little tour across the 'Twentse' countryside in the hope to find a field of dandelions with a nice backdrop. I knew of two locations with a good potential, but arriving at both locations the expected flowers were no longer there. I had to decide quickly what to do next. So I tried my luck at the 'Doorbraak', a nature reserve in development. The time of season was still too early and the overall impression didn't excite me at all.
Since the sun was already setting and I didn't have any other spot in mind, I ventured away from my car toward the river 'Eksosche Aa'. Just past a little woodland 'along the river, I found a nice view down an open field with side lighting from the west. I setup my camera and made a few exposures while the sun slowly dipped under the horizon. During the setting of the sun I noticed that the weather was changing. A thick layer of clouds slowly drifted in from the northeast bringing colder temperatures and the potential in blocking the sunlight sooner then expected. Luckily the cloud movement wasn't that fast and the sunset finished nicely.
The wall of clouds did intrigue me and I knew I had to do something with it. As soon as the sun lost its power I concentrated in cloud formation but also on the change in light.
It is good to know how the human eye reacts to changing light and how a camera copes with it. A human eye will adjust to the temperature of the light and will, sort of, evaluate it to an average Kelvin. The cone cells of a human eye cannot handle the change in light for a long time. The camera on the other hand needs adjustments to get to this result. It's an adjustment many photographers will make, since they prefer to capture what they see or saw. I prefer to a different approach and capture the true color of nature. For that reason, I leave my camera in the daylight white balance setting. Although I do shoot in RAW and have the capability to change the white balance in post processing, setting my camera white balance to daylight does give me a good indication of the color temperature through the display.
So here you got the result of the true color temperature right after sunset. And for those who want to know, it’s close to 14000K.
Something about the photo. Its a 13 second exposure created by using a 0.9ND filter to hold back the light and a 0.9 grad ND to balance the exposure. The movement in the water is actually the wind blowing over the water surface. |
Miss_Piggy, nagraj, Alex99, horia has marked this note useful
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Hallo Niek
Thanks for your kind note left on my latest posting. It is much appreciated.
Thanks for sharing this beautiful "right after sunset" scene with us. The combination of blues, greens and a little other colour in-between is a perfect match and is in wonderful harmony with one another, just like this scenery is very harmonious to look at. The movement of the wind in the water as well as on the trees is noticeable and creates a “cool” feeling. A most pleasant image. Thanks for sharing.
Best regards
Anna
- nagraj
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Star Workshop Editor/Gold Note Writer [C: 566 W: 94 N: 1194]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-g-g.gif)
(4870) - [2009-05-19 3:18]
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hi,
i got to appreciate about your technical know-how and the image. this image looks simple but i know how difficult sometimes to capture what we SEE exactly on the medium. thanks.
nagraj.v
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- Alex99
(18531)
- [2009-05-19 8:20]
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Hi Niek.
Very interesting post and picture by impressive result and applied technique. I like pictured scene a lot, wonderful blue colour key of image execution, fine reproduction of water stream and lovely place. TFS and kind regards.
Alexei.
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- PeterZ
(17500)
- [2009-05-19 8:43]
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Hallo Niek,
Het kan bijna niet Hollandser. Niet met het land en niet met de lucht. Goed om hiervan een foto op TN te zetten. Waarschijnlijk ben ik al honderden keren langs zo'n landschap gereden en me er alleen maar aan geërgerd. Maar zie, het kan ook mooi zijn. Fantastische compositie en diepte in de foto.
Groet,
Peter
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- horia
(14900)
- [2009-05-20 2:06]
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Hi Niek
You post a very interesting argument again, my friend.
The problem with the correct white balance is a common one and even if you have the benefits of shooting raw, it still takes a little bit of handling to get it right.
Your way of metering and setting a shot is a bit different than mine; i see you're using daylight...i, for now, resort to using mostly autoWB and them make the necessary corrections in ACR.
I also remember you mentioning in one of your older photos that you sometimes convert the same images for more WB settings and then use different parts of them to create a whole scene, better exposed to the real situation. I find myself correcting certain areas of a scene temperature-wise, too.
That being said, i really like your long exposure here. The effect of the wind on both the water and the clouds are great and definitely give more dynamism to this scene.
Interesting ultra wide composition - works well with the motion-blurred clouds you have in the top part - and an overall nice presentation.
Bravo and TFS
Horia
![Gold Star Critiquer/Gold Note Writer [C: 1378 W: 4 N: 2246]](http://i1.treknature.com/misc/g-n-g.gif)
(7257)