One of the highlights of our recent trip to Madagascar was the Tsingy de Bamaraha National Park. This UNESCO World Heritage Site is truly one of the wonders of Madagascar. It can be described as a forest of limestone rock pinnacles with breathtaking and unique scenery.
My mind was set on photographing the sun rising over this forest of rock needles. To achieve that we had to leave at 4 o'clock in the morning, drive a horrible dirt road in thick fog and hike across the surroundings dark forests and climb these steep and sharp rocks up to a view point, but it was all worth it!
However, since the dawn was not the most spectacular this morning I decided to make a feature of the sun peeping over these rocks. As we all know shooting into the sun create lens flare. Though this is generally regarded as undesirable, it can add to the atmosphere of an image too, if used in an aesthetically pleasing manner that fits the overall scene. This is exactly what I tried to achieve here. Though opinions will differ (and that is what I would like to hear from you), I believe that in this case the lens flare 'makes' the photo (and actually wish for even more flare). Just try to imagine the image without the flare...
Camera Model Canon EOS 40D
Shooting Mode Aperture-Priority AE
Tv( Shutter Speed ) 1/10, 1/25 and 1/60 (blend of 3 bracketed exposures)
Av( Aperture Value ) 16.0
Metering Mode Evaluative Metering
Exposure Compensation -2/3
Autoexposure Bracketing +/-1 1/3
ISO Speed 200
Lens EF-S17-85mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
Focal Length 41.0 mm
Image Size 3888x2592
Image Quality RAW
Flash Off
White Balance Mode Color Temperature(5200K)
AF Mode Manual focusing
Tripod, Remote, Live View (=MLU)
Hi Vincent
control of the counterlight is always difficult, as far as I know, the sunlight must be hardly seen, just a bit. I look foward what others will write, interesting for me( I get always flares !)
Hi Vincent, a beautiful place for sure. I agree that lens flare is usually not desired. I have some shots where I have six sided flare such as in this shot which, for me, doesn't work. What I do like (when done right) is the nice round flare you can sometimes get. The front flare that doesn't match the rest is somewhat out of place. I do like the sun and the wash from it on the rocks.
I have been contemplating this one all day today since seeing it. Though I am not adverse to lens flare and have it in some of my images, I feel there is too much too large flares in this image - especially the FG most blob on the right that is not a hexagon. Excluding the flare I like the star burst pattern of the sun and the interesting play of light and contrast the sun has on back lighting the rocks.
I've been looking at this since last night (early morning I suppose). I think what's missing is some drama in the sky. The flare in this case dominates the scene. I took it into photoshop and played around with it some. I added a violet photofilter to the sky and masked it from the flares and foreground. Then I boosted the contrast using USM (amount 5, radius 150). I didn't save it but I thought the purple sky that resulted helped compete with the flares.
Hi Vincent,
I too have been debating this one. A use of a grad 3 stop ND filter of more.....would have helped in the original and maybe even created more of a flare! I've re-posted what I think it would have looked like with 5 stops of grad ND filters. Of course working on the small jpeg I have introduced a ton of noise........which I tried to remove somewhat.........but it does give a good example of what I was talking about. I did remove the front flair as I agree it was a bit out of place. Let me know what you think.
Thank you all for your input, it is much appreciated. I definitely agree that the front flare is out of place, but cloning that out perfectly is almost undoable. Roman, I had convinced myself that in the digital age an ND Grad filter is not a necessity anymore... maybe I am wrong, especially seeing what you did to the sky here. Thanks.
Lens flare
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