Guango river

[john jackson]

I was standing on a bridge over the river at Guango, Ecuador, looking for Torrent Ducks. There had been a lot of rain and the river was high. The water rushing beneath my feet inspired me to try and take some images that were abstract yet conveyed something of the power of the river. I had a tripod with me, but the bridge was unstable and it did not help much. I decided to handhold, lean against the rail and hope for the best.

Does this image convey something to you or is it a blurry mess?

Canon 20D, 24-105mm @ 102mm, 1/4 second @ f22.

[Dave Mills]

Hi John, I like your conversion and the raging water flow.Trying to decide whether to crop out just after the break in the falls and just show the rock and the swirling water which is also appealing.Good eye...

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi John, I love it! It certainly looks wild and the B&W and motion blur of the water makes this look like a painting. Like it as presented.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi John,
I like this very much except for a bit of the top. Some say I love the crop tool too much....but here it is anyway! The top left corner drew my eye too much and seemed out of plac for me...... Let me know what you think!

[Robert Amoruso]

John,

I want to start off with saying how much I like this, especially the B&W - that was the way to go.

I felt a crop at the top was needed but not as much as Roman suggestions. I only cropped to eliminate that bright white flow in the upper left corner. Once I had the image open on my computer, I did a curves adjustment to make the image darker (in PS3, Curves, Darker Preset) by grabbing the center of the linear curve and pulling down. This brings out the details in the white flow much better. I then felt that a few really dark areas were too dark. I could have went back into curves to mess with the shadows but like the overall feel of the image so I used the Dodge Tool to open up the dark tips on the rocks and in the upper left.

Your HH worked great and the placement of the rock at a RoT power point is perfect.

Of course our interpretations can differ, just some things to considered. Keep them coming.

[john jackson]

Thanks Dave, Jerry, Roman and Robert for your kind words and reworkings.

This was a very low contrast image out of the camera. I upped the contrast a lot, but can see now that I should have gone farther. This is one of three in a series and I will take your tips forward to attack the others in similar vein.

Cheers

John

PS Robert, what is a RoT power point? I googled it and came right back to your posts on here!