Clouds & Fog High Key Yellow Legs

[Jim Fenton]

Very calm waters, very overcast and rather foggy this past Saturday morning on the salt marsh. The fog lifted up off of the water for 10 minutes or so.

Subject was back lit, EV compensation applied both to light the subject and to intentionally overexpose the water reflecting the fog.

Nikon D300, 500 AFS VR, TC14EII, ISO 800, F8, 1/100, CW metering with +2.3 EV compensation applied.

[Katie Rupp]

Absolutely beautiful, Jim. Great detail, sharp, very nice total reflection and the colors in the grasses add interest, echoing the yellow leg and make it pop. I would add a thin frame to set it off.

[Rob Lavoie]

Well done Jim

[Daniel Cadieux]

I really love this...what a beautifully composed artistic photograph. High-key at its' best! I agree a thin border would nicely set it off for web presentation. Was there some "cleaning" to do in the water or was it already devoid of any objects/ripples/debris? Congrats on a job well done!!

[Greg Basco]

Jim, fantastic image! Great choice to go against the sun and obtain this high-key image.

Cheers,
Greg Basco

[david cramer]

Nice work, Jim. And creative use of the light.

[Melvin Grey]

A really beautiful image - just shows what can be acheived with a bit of imagination under adverse lighting conditions.

[Jim Fenton]

A) I guess I need to learn to do borders :)

B) No "cleaning" was required this time. We had experienced several days of hard rain and the water levels in this particular salt panne had come up, so there was nothing floating around.

C) I had actually gone locking to shoot this type of image when left at 5:00 AM as I knew the water levels would have risen, I knew the winds should be calm and the tide on the ocean / bay was such that these birds would be where they were. What I hadn't counted on was the fog as there was none when I left the house.....fortunately it lifted up from the surface of the water on a couple of occasions, allowing me to capture this and a few other images of this type.

[Doug Brown]

It's one of my favorite of your photographic submissions Jim. Love everything about this one, from the high-key starkness, to the gorgeous reflection, to the placement of the bird to the right of the vegetation. Really well done!

[Axel Hildebrandt]

Great use of exposure control and nicely framed with the grass behind the bird.

[Rosl Roessner]

What a wonderful creative image. I love it!

[Julie Kenward]

This almost looks more like a sketch than a photograph. Superb high-key image, Jim. It's spot on!

[Charles Glatzer]

Jim,

I love the image!

I would bet if you spot metered off the bird the exposure would be the same w/o having to add any comp.
You probably know this...Manual exposure (you did not mention mode) would also allow you to position the subject anywhere within the frame without having to change comp as you would in Av.

Just add a quick default drop shadow;

If bkgd layer hit Ctrl J to duplicate layer then double-click the layer, outside the layer name or thumbnail.
or click the f/x symbol at the bottom of the layers palette. Choose drop shadow. The default setting should be fine.

Best and again love the pic.

Chas

[Ramon M. Casares]

Terrific! What else is there to say...

[Juan Aragonés]

Terrific Jim, one of the best I have seen here in the past weeks (and I have seen a lot of good images here ;))

[Lance Peters]

love it jim - awesome shot.