What a difference a few seconds make…
A week ago I went on a photo-expedition at the Kralingse Plas in Rotterdam. I hoped for a nice sunrise as the sky looked clear enough from my home. However when I got to Rotterdam, I appeared to be right under the edge of a giant nimbus. After waiting about 15 minutes for the rain to slow down, I realised that this was actually a good thing, as it presented some real drama in the sky. Being at the edge, the direction at which I took the photos made a huge difference. The photo’s below were taken just a few minutes apart.
Looking over the Kralingse Plas, everything looked nice and friendly and calm.
Turning towards the sun, and in comes the drama…
Finally there is the big contrast when facing the sun. The clouds partly blocking the sun helped to keep the contrast manageable (just!).
I walked along the river Rotte to return to my car, when I saw a rower coming. I noticed there was a small portion of floodlight from the sun across the river, and I wanted to catch the rower when he passed it. Having practiced with the bridge, I knew which settings on my camera to use, so I could be quick. The photo on top of this post is the result.
About 10 seconds later, I took the photo below. A big difference, isn’t it?
At the time I felt really excited for being able to catch the rower at the right moment. If I had put my camera in my bag I would have been too late. But I realised only later, when looking at all images from the rower, that there was more luck involved. In the picture below the rower is partly hidden behind the reed at the riverside, where in the photo above, the reed was cleared at that specific location. Sometimes you just have to be lucky 🙂 .
As luck seems to be on my side with this photo (the one on top, I mean), I decided to try it a bit further, so I entered this photo for the competition a Dutch newspaper is hosting:
http://foto.nrc.nl/Picture/view/132
Fingers crossed!
Pretty cool photo. I’ve voted! Competitions are fun. 🙂
Thank you!
Hi Aukje, I like the rower a lot. I would have opted for +0.8 exposure correction in LR (which would expose some of the water ripples, but keep the houses in the background dark; just my personal preference. The slight underexposure helps to keep the ). Can you look at the purple fringing around the roof top? I you might tweak it away with LR (lens correction). Bridge is also very nicely done; clever setting.
Thank you Adriaan. Wrt exposure: I tried different settings and for me this looked best (+0.35 correction), with higher correction the sky gets overexposed. I also tried a gradient filter to lighten only the bottom, but than the balance is off.
I am not sure what you mean with the purple fringing at the roofs. I see some green reflections from the wet rooftops, is that wat you’re talking about?