Reflective Lake

[markgozz]

Another early morning but a different lake , I'd been hopping for a good sunrise for some time now so I was very glad to be able to capture this one .

I'd been at the lake for about an hour when the colour started to appear in the sky so I decided to go right down to the waters edge to try and capture as much of the reflection as possible , just at the right moment all the bird activity stopped and the breeze died right down allowing the water to smooth out quite a bit . It wasn't until I got home that I suddenly thought that I should of done a bracketed exposure set to try and maximise the dynamic range but ha ho that sort of thing seems to happen to me quite a lot , so this is a single exposure with just a few tweaks to the levels and saturation .

My set up

Nikon D90 / Tripod / ND grad / exposure delay ( mirror lock ) / aperture priority f/22 / 1/50s / iso 200 / -0.7 exposure compensation .





As always all comments welcome and any tips that could help me to improve would be very welcome .

Thanks for looking

Mark

[JonnyM]

That's a very pretty sunrise with plenty of action in the sky. I like that the water isn't still and the position of the dark horizon. As you've stated your camera settings why did you use 200iso not 100iso, is this the lowest available on your camera?

[Geoff I]

Super Photo Mark would look great framed or on canvas.

[Jediboy]

The sky is certainly a pretty dramatic one, and well captured in the reflection too. Normally I don't go for horizons in the centre of the frame, but it works here and gives a well balanced symmetry. Good effort.

[CR3Snapper]

Originally Posted by Jediboy

The sky is certainly a pretty dramatic one, and well captured in the reflection too. Normally I don't go for horizons in the centre of the frame, but it works here and gives a well balanced symmetry. Good effort.

I was just about to say that. It cetainly does work well

[markgozz]

Thankyou all very much for your comments ,

JonnyM to answer your question yes the D90's lowest standard iso is 200 , I was quite lucky with the ripples because just before I took this shot you couldn't make anything out in the water because of the mess the birds and wind had made .

Thanks Geoff that's very kind of you to say , the funny thing is I still haven't got round to framing any of my work . ( shame on me )

Thanks Jediboy and CR3Snapper ,although I'd like to I can't take credit for the sky but I did try a number of compositions to try and avoid the central position of the far bank but nothing I tried worked as well as this one and because it was well balanced I thought I'd stick with it .

Thank you all again for your time .

Mark

[Markyboy1]

Thats a stunning image Mark, this I would absolutely hang on my wall. Cracking shot

Mark

[markgozz]

Cheers Mark , that's a massive compliment thank you very much .

Mark

[OldBoy]

Originally Posted by markgozz

Thanks Jediboy and CR3Snapper ,although I'd like to I can't take credit for the sky but I did try a number of compositions to try and avoid the central position of the far bank but nothing I tried worked as well as this one and because it was well balanced I thought I'd stick with it .


Mark

The reflections are a mirror image therefore, only the central position would work. Rules are only a guide to composition and not something set in stone.

Cracking shot and composition. Try turning the picture 180% you might be surprised how well it works.

[markgozz]

Cheers Oldboy , I had a look at it flipped and I think I like it better .

To be perfectly honest I was trying for a different layout because I thought a central position would be a bit too much of a cliche but it was the best look out of all the shots I took , the other reason I stayed with this shot was because I ran out of time to do anything else it's amazing how quickly the scene changes from minute to minute and before you know it the colour has gone and your back to dull sky's .

Mark