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Green Dimension

Posted by
Darkelf Photography (Perth, Australia) on 3 April 2024 in Landscape & Rural.

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Time for a little bit of green. I wanted to post a photo with a green them for a while and I finally got around to processing this image. It comes from a walk to Lake Wombat near Franz Josef Glacier in New Zealand. During our walks, I am always on a look out for an interesting rainforest scene or for a stream with little waterfalls. I found this combination just off the trail, and I nearly walked past without noticing it. I heard a gentle shimmer of the stream and I could not locate it at first. After a quick scan of the area I found the source of the sound and then had to hop down from the overpass into what turned out to be a little oasis of ferns and cascades.

Luckily, there were some rocks protruding from under the water and I had sturdy boos to be able to perch atop to set up my tripod for the photos. I did not want to disturb the nature and there was just enough space for me do manage that. The view which opened up before me was full of wonder and enchantment. I really did not expect it to be hidden right next to the footpath and it also did not look like too many others explored it either.

I had lots of options when it came to the composition. I could go very wide to cover the entire view or I could choose to focus on specific elements in front of me. I was able to try a number of variations and spent quite a bit of time at this location to fine tune my vision. For this photo, I went with a slightly tighter composition at just over 50mm. It allowed me to zoom in towards the two little falls and to bring the background into more prominence behind them. I was very close to the foreground rock and the wall of green at the back was about 5-6 meters further, so to achieve good depth and sharpness, I decided to take photos with different points of focus throughout the scene. I then focused stacked these photos in post processing. I do not use this technique very often but it does come handy in situations like this. There were no issues when stitching the frames together in Photoshop. It did a good job and I did not have to do too much clean up afterwards.

The sky was overcast and the light was quite uniform which meant that I did not need to bracket exposures, and single frames were all I needed for the dynamic range present here. I worked on different shutter speeds to catch the flowing water to my taste. The flow was very gentle and I required exposures of at least one second to get a bit of silkiness into it. Unless I am photographing raw power of big flowing falls, I usually want to have the water nice and smooth for my waterfall/stream photos. The added bonus of slightly longer exposure was producing lovely clear reflections in the middle part of the image. This is also a scene which benefited greatly from the use of a polarising filter. It helped to cut through the glare and reflections, and allowed for richer saturation of green tones with deeper shadows as well.

Other than the focus stacking, my main post processing tasks were to balance the green tones, work on contrast for specific parts of the image, and enhance the feeling of depth in the scene. While contrast adjustments have always been a big part of my workflow, I spend quite a bit of time on colour adjustment as well these days. When I first convert the RAW file, I keep the colours under-saturated and then slowly build up saturation through various adjustments. I found the results to be much more to my liking this way, and hopefully more natural too. I mentioned colour grading under one of my photos recently, and I indeed did some subtle grading on this photo, as it just helped to bring all the elements together.

I love this kind of discoveries during our walks when we travel. I can guarantee you that the moment I hear a stream somewhere, I straight away think of how to get to it to see if it presents something worthy of my longer attention. Some times it might just be beautiful to look at, and sometimes it might even present a good photographic opportunity, just as this one did.

Canon EOS R5 2 seconds F/8.0 ISO 50 53 mm

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Landscape & rural by Maryse