So I was at one of my old haunts during this week. Though I was capturing wildlife, the quality of light on the water in this capture has mesmerised me. The water without the duck would not be so arresting, but much as I fiddle with exposure and contrast, my brain keeps telling me the bird is underexposed. Yes, fancy masking could brighten the bird and leave the water unchanged, but that would still give the effect of de-emphasising the water, which is what grabs me the most.
Sorry if I am teaching my grandmother to suck eggs, but what kind of metering did you use? I generally find spot metering works better for this kind of subject.
Beautiful shot!
My first quick attempt. I made a blend of -1 and +1 EV using enfuse. Into GIMP. Luminosity mask plug-in - adjustments mainly on the bird, but a slight increase in saturation on one layer to emphasise the colours in the water.
Here’s my play. Focus is on the water with the bird as a prop. Does this meet your purpose- to bring out the shimmering water? Did of course give a bluish-green tint to the water
Here is my version. Got inspired by some shots of HARMAN Phoenix | Harman Photo I’ve seen online. This is a completely new color film formula from a company making historically only black and white film, that sounds pretty cool for living in the 2020s. This film stock is quite contrasty and grainy and has a lot of halation.
Used darktable for cropping and white balance: 2024-05-15_14-12-59.75_DSC7345.nef.xmp (7.6 KB) Then a custom film sim I’m fiddling around. Recently I added masking couplers to increase saturation of negatives.
My thanks to you all … @priort - my favourite is the third you posted (…_06) in that it best brings out the duck details without negatively impacting the water effect. @epeeist - you are not so teaching - I am normally lazy and leave my metering in centre-weighted matrix mode - EXIF data says “multi-segment.” Probably I should change the camera preset-bank that I use for long-lens wildlife to spot-metering. Thanks for the prompt. @PD1 - yes, indeed, my goal is bird as a prop; the effects of the light on the water as the main event. How best to achieve that? That is the question. Hence play-raw. This is one of those images that I will probably always wrestle with.
Time for another try. Having seen the result from iarga, I decided to attempt a more “silky” look to the water. I started with an exposure of +1EV from Filmulator, then in GIMP, using my luminosity mask plug-in, I made adjustments to contrast & brightness of the water, a slight increase in saturation and a little Gaussian blur in the brightest layer.
