Sharon Prislipsky, APSA, EPSA
About the Image(s)
We took our camper into the Ouachita Mountains a couple weeks ago, just after a very hard all day rain. We found this pretty cascade along a scenic road. It actually feeds 28 ft. Hardy Falls which is just below it, but I thought the cascade was more intereting than the falls. Interestingly, two days later the cascade was down to a mere trickle, so i felt lucky to be there at the right time.
I captured this image around 6 AM which was technically just a few minutes after sunrise, but it is on the west side of the mountain, so the sun was not over the horizon in this location. This made the understory pretty dark requring me to bump up the ISO quite a bit. I also used a polarizer so ended up needing ISO 640. Aperture was f/16 and I made 3 exposures 1 2/3 stops apart.
The processing was done in Viveza and Color Efex Pro4. I like my water to be white so adjusted the hue and I incresed detail in a few places. I used tonal contrast, and I think I used Skylight on this. I finished with Reflector Effects, using the silver preset and adjusting the direction of the light and falloff. There is one area in the center where there was some movement of the leaves due to the air current generated by the falling water. I have sharpened this as much as I can, and I am thinking that at normal viewing distance it is passable. Of course if we pixel peep we can see that it is soft, but I still think that this would be OK for a canvas print. I will be curious to see what you all think.
This round’s discussion is now closed!
5 comments posted
Next, I ran my 30/30 unsharp mask action, the effect of which was oversharpening. I left it in but reduced the opacity of that layer. Frankly, it looks sharp to me without it.
I then added clarity and darkness to the pool about the lower fall to bring some richness to that pool, since it commands a center of attention above the main falls.
Last, I ran from NIK a Glamour Glow, which I think is an Orton effect. (An effect where a blurred layer is placed over a sharp layer to create a glow without destroying sharpness.) I actually meant to run the darken edges lighten center filter but this came us as I had last used it and it created an effect I liked.
Bravo Sharon, this one belongs on a wall.   Posted: 06/02/2020 10:06:45
  Posted: 06/14/2020 19:42:20