Reflections

Week 13

I do reflections from time to time, but usually end up not caring too much for them - for one thing mine often seem too symmetric. Sometimes they seem best blurry - see for example this picture of Story Bridge. But today I was trying for a sharp reflection and something more offbeat.

The location is Kananaskis Upper Lake and the light is afternoon sun from the left. The lake has a lot of dead stumps along the shore and that was to be the main subject. Of course there is a lot more in the frame, maybe too much. But somehow it comes together for me. There is fair balance for one thing. I really like the roots on the tree, they look like an octopus' arms. I thought it might be good in square format and framed it with that in mind when I shot.

The camera is my D3 and was in aperture priority at f/22 - I might have set it a little more open but I wanted good focus from front to back. A lot of people worry about diffraction at small apertures but I don't for small pictures and the interntet. Probably should have set it at f/16 and taken a little more care anyway :-). The lens is a Nikkor 24-70 f/2.8 at 24mm. I took a couple of frames but thought this one worked best for a reflection. It is set at ISO 400 so I can hand hold at 1/80 sec. Probably should have had a tripod too :-).

Post processing consisted of the square crop and going into lab mode with soft light to get a bit more contrast and punchier color. I dialed lab color back to 50% to tone it down it a bit.

Idea based on On Reflection, pages 82-83 in the book 50 Photo Projects, by Lee Frost