Rodney Campbell's Blog

What a difference a little time can make to a photograph…

Some time ago I’d posted some sunset images I’d taken at Kirribilli one night looking down a nice little stone jetty back towards the Sydney Opera House, the city and the Sydney Harbour Bridge with some crazy light filled cracks in the clouds in the sky.

Teaching Point: I thought I’d post a little Before and After comparison. In this case it’s not a before and after “processing” (both of these images have had the same processing applied to them (synchronised in Adobe Lightroom)) but rather a before and after at capture time highlighting one of the controls you have when you’re actually taking the image – time.

These two frames were taken consecutively less than one minute apart.

Tear in the Fabric – Before and After

NIKON D600 + 16.0-35.0 mm f/4.0 @ 18 mm, 2.5 & 15 sec at f/11, ISO 100 + Hitech 0.9 Reverse Grad (+ Lee 0.9 ND)

I’d first taken a “normal” shot just using a 3 stop reverse grad filter to hold down the exposure of the horizon and sky. It was quite dark just before sunset with very heavy clouds blocking the sun so we already had a fairly long 2.5 second exposure. We’re getting a touch of streaky movement in the clouds and smoothish water with this exposure time…

However I was looking for a more streaky sky with fast moving clouds moving away from us overhead so I added a 3 stop ND and used a 15 second exposure. Taking what was already a quite respectable image to I believe a more interesting image – you be the judge…

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