Hello everyone,
I was out teaching my Fine-Art B+W Long Exposure Workshop here in Vancouver this past weekend.
I usually do not shoot during my workshops, as my attention is reserved for the students, but on our second photography outing I had an opportunity to make this one picture using my new Nikon D800.
Here's my final image:
Exposure: 1986 seconds (approx. 33 minutes) @ F8 ISO 100. Total of 19 stops of ND (using 2 filters)
The image above has been converted to black and white in Silver Efex Pro 2. Grain has been added, the original has almost no visible noise at all. One nice advantage of the high resolution is the fact that even after cropping this image to a panorama with aspect ratio of 1:2 we are still left with almost 25 megapixel resolution. Nice.
Here is the original, un-cropped image:
Note the vignetting that is caused by stacking two ND filters while shooting with a 17mm wide-angle lens. There are also some branches visible in the top left corner that have been retouched out in the final version above.
This is a 100% view of the original image. Good sharpness and very little noise. Exposure has been adjusted to +1 to show details of the tree trunk.
In addition to sharpness, noise level and resolution I am also very impressed with the D800 tonality capture. If you look at the smooth gradation of tones in the black and white image above, it's hard to belief this has been taken with a digital SLR. Still, I see a very noticeable difference to my Phase One Digital Back, but the 'gap' has certainly been narrowed. Especially when considering the extended exposure time of over 30 minutes.
Turning our attention to composition, I'd like to point to the importance of 'negative space'.
This is one of the most important concepts in my photography and I cannot stress it enough when talking with my students.
When considering how to approach my composition for this photograph, I decided to use the widest lens I had in my bag that day. The 17mm lens on a full-frame body gave me a very wide view, and allowed me to include lots of negative space (aka the sky) around my subject (aka the tree). What is more, I decided to add a strong vignette to my final image which I belief helped to direct the viewer's eye to my subject by increasing the negative space even further.
Many composition classes point out the concept of 'Fill the Frame', which essentially is meant to help you make your compositions more effective and intentional by placing visual emphasize on your subject.
In this case, however, by including large areas of negative space I am doing the exact opposite. By pulling away from my subject and making it fill the frame less, I also heighten it's visual importance.
For more examples of this, take a look at the incredible tree photography by Michael Kenna. He is a true master of minimalist photography featuring lots of negative space. He is one of my greatest inspirations and I keep my fingers crossed that one day I might be able to achieve his kind of 'pure vision' and photographic excellence....
More tk...
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