Photo of the Week – June 19, 2011
This image is from the recent spring photo tour in the Canadian Rockies. We we lucky to get great light one morning at Upper Waterfowl Lake in Banff National Park. Here I used my Canon 24mm TS-E lens tilted so the plane of focus gave maximum sharpness. I used a Singh-Ray 2-stop hard-edge grad to hold back the brightness in the upper part of the scene. As well, I used a Lee Big Stopper 10-stop ND filter to give a long 233-second exposure at f9 to show motion in the clouds. To see a larger version click on the photo.
©Darwin Wiggett
Darwin Wiggett 
June 20, 2011 at 7:25 AM
Great image Darwin. I like how the rocks in the foreground follow the shape of the mountains in the reflection.
June 20, 2011 at 1:33 PM
A question about the use of the grad filter. The reflection appears to have the same or nearly the same value of the mountain itself. Shouldn’t the reflection be about an f stop less?
The very slow shutter speed to show cloud motion is interesting and different.
June 20, 2011 at 1:53 PM
Richard, the old rule that reflections should be one-stop less than the thing reflected is just like the rule of thirds. You need to adapt that ‘rule’ to your own tastes. The human eye thinks something is ‘fishy’ if the reflection is brighter then the thing reflected. But if the reflection is darker or the same in intensity we accept it as more ‘realistic’. In reality reflections are usually 2-stops darker but when captured on camera, a 2-stop difference really looks way too dark. For my eye a one-stop difference still looks darker than my eye remembers things so I tend to match the brightness of the reflection and the thing reflected and I like the results. Do what works well for you and how you want things portrayed, there is no single ‘correct’ answer.
June 21, 2011 at 8:16 AM
Great shot Darwin… nice classic look to it!