Alone in the Water

Alone in the Water

Image of the Week

Laying alone in the water. Sometimes you have to force yourself out of your normal zones to take photos that you would not normally take. Don’t give yourself options. Take one lens that you don’t shoot with as much, and just go for a walk. I had been feeling like I needed to do something different with my images that wasn’t my usual wildlife shooting. It was time to break out of my norm for a little while and in a way, get back to what I started with. Before I got ‘real’ camera equipment, I spent a couple years just shooting with my cell phone. You don’t get a lot of options with a camera phone, so you end up finding things that can work with the limited range.

I went back to this concept by taking a walk with my 28-135mm lens. Granted, this does have a bit of a range, but it isn’t like taking two bodies with this lens and a 100-400mm. I found myself reverting back to old habits that I had almost forgotten about. Looking for small things that had interesting looks and patterns. I started with flowers, and ended up with this shot while walking around a small pond in Sacramento’s Land Park.

This single leaf was alone in the water. The leaf found its way to a perfect resting place in the shallow water, to be framed by the paving stones around the pond.

Image Considerations

In taking this shot, I saw that the leaf was alone in the water and already nicely framed by the paving stones. This lent itself to the leaf being in the lower third of the image. Because of this, I adjusted my focus point to the lower third so the focus and exposure would be based on the leaf. This slightly overexposed the pavers, but I knew I could make them work in post processing.

Image Lighting

This shot was taken about two hours before sunset. With the low angle of the sun, the light was very good. There was no direct light on the water to reflect that may create problems in the shot. The area was also fully in the shadow of trees, so the light was fairly even with no shadows in the frame to consider. The pavers and leaf in the frame are only about twelve inches total in width.

Camera and Settings

I shot this with my Canon 1Ds Mk III and Canon 28-135mm IS USM lens. I hand held this shot due to the angle needed to try and be directly above the leaf. It is a slight slope into the pond, so I was actually leaning over the water. Because of this, I did not want to risk setting up my tripod. This forced me to want my shutter speed to be fast enough to safely hand hold. I’ve taken shots down to 1/30th, but don’t like to go that slow unless there is no other option.

I picked f/8 for my aperture to try and ensure good focus across the width of the image. With my focus point in the lower third, this body/lens combination can end up soft around the edges if the DOF is not deep enough.

I generally use partial metering when shooting so the exposure is based on the main subject in the image. Although this can lead to areas of the image being under/over exposed, they can usually be compensated for in post processing. My goal is for the main subject to be exposed the way I would like.

  • 135mm
  • f/8
  • 1/60th
  • 0 exposure bias
  • ISO 500

Editing Inspiration

This ended up being a fairly simple edit. My intent was to bring out the colors of the leaf, and the details in the entire scene. The pavers have wonderful details and contrasts with light and dark. The leaf itself has an interesting texture and some small bubbles. Once I achieved these goals, I experimented with applying textures to the image. I ended up using an organic style texture that added an interesting look.