I am trying to do more work with long exposure. This was I believe my first real success at getting a long exposure with water in it. I tried to draw the eye in post through the photo by lightening up the water and snow on the banks of the river. It ends up bringing your eye to the sunset.
I am also practicing with blending exposures. So, I had one exposure for the sky and one for the foreground.
IN POST:
I blended the two exposures, dodged/burned, adjusted exposure and saturation, I added clarity to the foreground for details in the snow (didn't want more clarity in the trees else I felt it would distract from the best parts of the photo), added contrast and adjusted curves slightly, and then I split toned to adjust the blues and oranges.
I would love your critique and thoughts on how you would make it better, or a critique on what you felt worked well in the image. Thanks!
IMHO, Composition is great, colors also, but creek is leading my eye towards trees on the hills which gets lost in the blur.
Personally I would not mind if this entire composition was tack sharp end to end.
Hi Jeron. I too am slowly progressing for long exposures. while doing so, I realised that I need to have clear concept and storey of the frame as smooth elements would change the perception of the composition. while I can understand perhaps why you have chosen to leave the trees/hills darker, please share other versions of this location if you can.
thanks.
This is the version that I updated.