Abstract Photo, “The River”

I spent a good part of the afternoon on “Black Friday” avoiding the crowds of crazy shoppers that were out and about by hanging out at the Little River Canyon National Preserve near Fort Payne, Alabama. My primary purpose was to make long exposure images in and around the canyon. One of the images I came away with was this abstract photo I’ll call “The River”.

The process of making this abstract photo

One of my objectives in honing my long exposure photography skills is to work on my creativity, particularly as it relates to abstract photos. Abstract images allow people to have a variety of perceptions and interpretations of an individual photo. Long exposures lend themselves easily to the creation of abstract photos. One of the areas of opportunity in long exposure images of water involves ensuring that there is sufficient texture to the water. Too often, long exposures of water have highlights that are blown out and consequently contain no data available to correct when post processing. I typically under expose by 1/3 to 2/3 of a stop to maintain that detail. Then in post processing, I’ll bring the exposure back up in the other areas keeping the detail and texture in the moving water intact. This has worked consistently well for me.

Equipment and Processing

For this image, I used the Fujifilm X-Pro1 and the XF 18mm f/2 lens. Exposure was 5 seconds at f/8 and ISO 200. I processed the RAW image through Lightroom; did some minimal cropping and then boosted the contrast selectively in Color Efex Pro to further bring out the texture in the water.

© 2012, The F/Stop Guy: Abstract Photo, “The River”, Little River Canyon