Focus on enjoying your photography
Life shouldn’t be all work and stock photographers need to take a break from the creation of “saleable” images sometimes! Yesterday I took a trip to Valley Falls State Park in “Wild and Wonderful West Virginia” with my local camera club – a place that is only 30 miles from my home, but I hadn’t known existed before this weekend! I’m not sure any of these shots are worth uploading to stock agencies, but I enjoyed a pleasant couple of hours in the fresh air trying to come up with interesting variations on the straight forward waterfall shots:
This one was taken with the Singh-Ray Gold ‘n’ Blue filter plus a variable neutral density filter as well to give me a shutter speed of 1.6 seconds. I did some traditional shots as well, but I really liked the abstract colors that you can get using this filter.
The focus on the log trapped in the rocks gives a nice focal point for these images I think, and so I lightened that area and gave it some extra clarity and sharpness. I added a lot of clarity to the bare trees in the background to make them a little more ghostly.
The waterfall is not normally like this, so I will definitely have to go back in more normal conditions – perhaps with some fall colors as well! For now, the images are just on Fine Art America – perhaps someone will think that they make a nice wall print!
So get out there and enjoy yourselves!
Dreamy stuff! Hope you get some sales on FAA.
Thanks Alex. Now about those sales on FAA – not too hopeful to be honest!
Hey Nice Steve … most especially the first one for my taste. And you of course are more than right about just sometimes shooting what pleases you first. Then who knows … like the waterfalls, we like’um too. 🙂
Thanks Bill – a bit of artistic work is good after a long day at the monitor!
JUST CHECKED OUT THE IMAGES ON FINE ART AND LOOKING AT JUST ONE SECTION OF THE LAST IMAGE ABOVE BLOWN UP WITH THEIR MAGNIFIER, FOCUSING ON JUST THE TOP OF A FALL AND THE WATER AS A SQUARE, THIS MAKES A SUPERB IMAGE IN MY VIEW, WHICH SOMEBODY MIGHT WELL BUY, AS IT IS SOOTHING, LOVELY MUTED COLOURS AND WOULD SUIT A PARTICULAR DOMESTIC OR OFFICE DECOR, FROM BATHROOM TO BEDROOM OR LOUNGE.
Interesting! I did have a quick look in Lightroom with different crops. I’ll have to try something using the center part of the image and have a look at other images I took to see what else might make a pure abstract. Thanks!
Update: I did a couple of images that are now on Fine Art America