Well, not exactly. I had an idea for a photograph that emerged during the winter. Now was that moment for trying to get the idea into reality.
I arrived by the lake at around 1 am and saw that there was some dim noctlucient clouds near the northern horizon. I waited until they got bright enough and then...
Took off my pants (not underpants..) and started wading. The water got rather deep and it was surprisingly cold. When I arrived the place, got all my equipment set I saw that the nlc:s were overrun by regular clouds. I stayed in the waist deep water for a while, but no avail. The display was gone.
I got up from the lake, dressed up and went to get my camera bag. For my surprise
the clouds were slowly disappearing and a glorious nlc-display emerged. Dang. I was already feeling quite chilly but no can do. Back into the lake.
I was shaking but managed to hold the shaking during the 10 to 20 secs exposures.
Finally I felt like I had enough, got up, dressed, sat in my car and put the seat heater to the max.
EDIT: New picture, thanks for the info, there was something wrong with my screen calibration..
However, couple of things that are distracting
1. The middle is very bright, so my eyes just stay in that area...and its nothing really interesting.
2. The clouds...are you sharpening them? the dark cloud on the right is also distracting
I hope you get a chance to do this again with better conditions
That sounds like quite the wet adventure! I like what you were going for here. Sunny makes some great points though about the horizon being too bright visually. I would brighten up the bottom a bit more. It's nice to have a little mystery, but brighten it up some, get some light on that lilly pad on the left side that is almost totally black. I think if you brighten up the foreground just a little bit more, it will make for some nice frosting on the cake you have here.
Love the noctilucent clouds! I agree with the suggestions above. With some slight changes, you have one magnificent image! Great effort and great image!
Keith W.
I like this picture. Nicely captured, and especially
after all your efforts in the coolld water, brrrr...
But, it is so large I cannot see
it without moving about my computer screen...
The edit looks a lot better! It's always good when you do edits to leave the original up and then just add the edit below it so people who are new to the thread can see the difference and see if the first people who commented made sense.
I didn't see the original but this Edit is gorgeous, with the one exception of the half cropped lily in the front, would be great if you have a shot with the whole flower / pad ?
I think Cheryle must have a small screen (?) because it doesn't even fill ⅔ of my 21" iMac screen.
JimFox wrote:
The edit looks a lot better! It's always good when you do edits to leave the original up and then just add the edit below it so people who are new to the thread can see the difference and see if the first people who commented made sense.
Jim
That's true, sorry about that. For all who didn't see it, the original had way too much contrast. Apparently my work pc:s screen is not set up for the task...
Frogfish wrote:
I didn't see the original but this Edit is gorgeous, with the one exception of the half cropped lily in the front, would be great if you have a shot with the whole flower / pad ?
I think Cheryle must have a small screen (?) because it doesn't even fill ⅔ of my 21" iMac screen.
Thanks. Well, there's only one problem and that is, I was in the middle of these pads and if I would have gotten the lily pad in whole, there would have been another with the same half-cropped problem..
If I had backed out a bit, the flower would have gotten too small. It was about eight inches from the
front lens (14mm, ff, five pictures focus stack)
Ummm........am I understanding right...this is a handheld 20 second exposure? If that's the case you've got the steadiness of a dead guy!
Nonono It's five 20 seconds exposures with the help of a tripod. Camera was less than ten inches above the water surface. Boy was I scared that it would trip and...
But if you are referring to my efforts to prevent my body for shaking, well, that was in order to prevent small waves for forming. They had a good chance of ruing the picture, reflection would have been blurred as would have been the plants.