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My question is two-fold. On my way to take “silky water effect” pictures as an assignment from the “Explore” series, I passed by a stagnant stream that had an ice shelf about 2 feet above the surface of the water. Wow! A totally amazing display of God’s handiwork! Problem. I couldn’t figure out how to capture the height of the shelf in relation to the water. I feel like you can barely see that it’s that far above the water in the pictures! How could I have captured that better? The first pic is one of the best that I got.
@jamesstaddon, the second pic is one of my tries at getting the silky water effect; I don’t have a tripod at my disposal, so I used a monopod.Camera: Nikon D3100
Ice shelf pic settings:
f/20
Exposure: 1/10
ISO: 100
Focal length: 55mmSilky water pic settings:
f/25
Exposure: 1/10
ISO: 100
Focal length: 110mmAttachments:
So glad you made it out to take some pictures!
Wow, that is something else. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that ice phenomenon up so high like that before! Truly amazing. Looking at the first picture there, you’re right, the shelf looks like it is only very small and on the left side only. After looking at it a while, I see how the shelf continues around and closer on the right. Here are some ideas that might help to capture it next time:
* When sizing up a dimensional scene like this, look at it with one eye closed. This allows you to see two dimensionally like the camera sees it. Move around until you sense the perspective that appears more three dimensional even when one eye is closed.
* Get real close to the shelf, perhaps almost touching the camera. Frame the shot so the edge of the shelf can be seen circling around, leading the eye into the frame. Perhaps shoot it wider angle?
* It looks like there might be some things protruding up through the shelf from below. Perhaps focus on one of those and make it your subject, including elements of the shelf in the background that would still tell the story of a “super high ice shelf” even though it is not technically your main subject.
* The ice on the left side of the picture looks more like a shelf because the white ice is set against a dark background….on the right side, the shelf is set against the light ice below. Our eyes automatically tend to merge them together so it looks less like two layers of ice, two feet apart, in the final shot.As for the second shot, that’s a good, shapely section of flowing water to experiment with. If you don’t have a tripod, do what you can to zoom in with your feet and shoot as wide angle as you can. At 1/10sec shutter speed, the picture is much more likely to be blurry at a focal length of 110mm than if you were at say, 18mm. It seems like 1/10sec is not really making the water look too blurry…I think it’s because the water is not moving super fast (being just a stream and not an actual waterfall). But this is ok. You just need a slower shutter speed. Try resting the camera on a rock, setting the Drive Mode to 2-second timer, and going completely hands-off during a shutter speed of like 1 second. I’d like to see what that looks like!
Thank you so much, James, for those very helpful comments!! I will definitely try to apply your suggestions and post that pic once I get it! I was just wondering about your comment on trying a wider angle. I’m not sure how to do that. Does that have to do with the lens I’m using or the settings I have? The only lenses I have are 18-55mm and 55-200mm.
Yes, that’s right! Focal length has to do with your lens. How far in or out you zoom is the focal length. So my suggestion would be instead of using 55mm on your 18-55mm or 55-200mm, put on your 18-55mm lens and shoot at 18mm-ish. 18mm is wider angle than 55mm.
Nice focal length by the way. 🙂 Most folks don’t need much beyond that range from 18mm to 200mm. In fact, the focal length range of my lenses is 17mm to 200mm, so we’re pretty close there.
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