Betws-y-Coed

[Neilmac50]

This is of the river running through the lovely town of Betws-y-Coed in North Wales,taken yesterday.ISO 200, 13 second exposure,f/14, with a Nikon D3s and Nikkor 24-70mm f/2.8 lens,Singh-Ray Vari-ND filter.

[Marty]

Lovely smooth result from that long exposure. I hate to think how precarious your tripod placement must've been on those slippery rocks! Is there a touch of HDR treatment in here as well?

[Maritimer1]

Beautiful dreamy water. I know nothing about filters. What effect does the one you used have on your photos?

[Neilmac50]

The filter just blocked some of the light out without affecting the colours allowing me to use a longer shutter speed to blur the water.Its the first time I've used this filter and I think that it could have done with a shorter exposure to give a bit of definition to the water.Processing was done within Lightroom 3 using some of the presets.

[MrB]

The filter just blocked some of the light out without affecting the colours allowing me to use a longer shutter speed to blur the water. Its the first time I've used this filter and I think that it could have done with a shorter exposure to give a bit of definition to the water.

Neil,

This is something I have yet to try but I think you are right. I have seen many photos similar to this in which the effect is overdone, so that the water loses its flowing liquid texture and becomes transformed into a fog. It would seem logical that a shorter exposure will retain more of the watery texture while still giving the impression of movement, which is presumably the purpose of the technique.

Philip

[PBelarge]

I have an identical twin. He hates the dreamy smooth look when applying filters, and I like the dreamy smooth look. I say this because two people can be close, yet have completely different tastes...it is "the essence of what makes the world go round."

I think what makes this image work as well as it does with the filter is, it seems the image was made while a lot of sun pounded the scene. The long exposure takes the overexposed scene and makes it work. Though I would be interested to see an exposure of less time to examine the results.