A few years ago I photographed the small weir/waterfall?in the ford at the entrance to the Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales Elizabeth & Rowe Harding Nature Reserve. In those photographs, I photographed from the reserve side of the ford. The water level was lower and overall the photographs were much bluer in colour.
Even though the photographs were made about the same time, the bluer cast wasn’t as evident in the newer images. The camera settings were the same, my camera is always set to daylight white balance, but even the water had a yellow – brown colour to it.
I knew I wanted to make the images quite abstract, so I experimented with the shutter speed to control the amount of blur to the water. Those that know me, know that I like to see some detail ?in the motion of the water and not a completely unrecognisable blur. I then experimented with vertical and horizontal framing.
I think the most successful image is the top of the three above. It brings together the feel and exposure settings that match my initial vision. The other images don’t quite work for me; the vertical image has too much white water at the base of the image and the horizontal image above doesn’t have enough colour or abstract nature to it.
It is all very subjective and even looking at the picture on the back of the camera doesn’t help. It always pays to wait a bit from the time of capture before editing your images?to allow a bit of objectivity without some of the emotions present at the time of the image capture clouding your judgement. A larger screen always helps as well.
