stustustudio
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Behind The Lens
Location
This photo is taken from the boat launch in Lewiston, NY where I live. It's located about 7 miles down the Niagara River from Niagara Falls.Time
SunsetLighting
It gets tricky to do long exposure during this time of day because although you get amazing colors the shadows don't get enough light to show up in your exposure.Equipment
Canon 6D, B+W 10 stop Neutral Density Filter, Vanguard Pistol Grip Tripod, corded shutter release triggerInspiration
I love watching sunsets at the waterfront. They are often beautiful and always peaceful. I also enjoy the excitement of racing to get all you can before the light is gone.Editing
For starters I converted this to black and white via a tried and true selective gradient masking method that take 3 different monochrome conversions from Nik Silver Efex (bright, middle, dark) and merged them to taste in Photoshop. The clouds in this photo didn't translate as well as I'd hoped in black & white (color version here: https://www.viewbug.com/photo/68553852 ) so I started an experiment to see if I could motion blur the clouds and still keep the foreground lamp looking believable and not pasted in or anything. It immediately became one of my favorite creations!In my camera bag
Canon 6D, 24-105 Lens, cloth to clean the lenses, extra memory cards & batteries, a few different filters (neutral density, polarizing, UV), extra tripod shoe, TrFeedback
If you're going to do long exposure get a very steady tripod, watch for too much wind (even your camera strap blowing around will cause the exposure to lose sharpness), and keep an eye out for light leaks (filter not flush, eye piece, port covers not on) Also take a lot of varied exposures since as many of us know - your LCD screen on the back of the camera will lie to you ;) I like to try to find my perfect exposure based on feel (a number of people start with an exposure calculator but I like starting with 10 seconds the adjust based on it's histogram) I also prefer dark exposures to light since you can't do much with a hot white overexposed spot in a photo. Oh - and if you're like me you should take some time to think of a cool title! This photos is titled "Tomorrow's Whisper"