Salamanders are everywhere! This is in a stream. I thought they looked pretty and kind of abstract in the reflection of the trees.
I was trying a slower shutter speed to get more movement in the water. Does it work. Anything else…
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
300mm
1/40
f/6.3
ISO 100
Handheld but was kind of able to lean on bridge.
Adjusted exposure, contrast , cropped to 11x8.5
I think I see your intent here, Vanessa, but I can’t find a way into this shot. Whenever I do an abstract like this involving water, reflection and something under the surface, it’s a really tough thing to pull off. Do you have or were you using a polarizer? That may have helped a little. Depending on the angle you can have part of the water’s surface reflecting and part revealing what’s underneath. It works pretty well when the sun is in the right position. Otherwise it’s just glare and softness like you have here. I can tell there are fishes down there, but they’re not present enough to be a definitive subject. The reflection is a nice one and frames the fish well, but it overwhelms them in this case. Using a polarizer may have also given you some more darks/shadows to work with to improve contrast and color depth.
Keep pointing the camera that way though and maybe look into a polarizer if you don’t have one. Oh and check out Igor’s pond reflections shot to see what I mean about having a definitive subject in a diffuse image (not a lot of contrast).
Thanks @Kris_Smith no I don’t have a polarizer and probably in this instance the whole scene was too far away unlike my other one which was a lot closer : Pond Life
