Swirling City, 2011 by Gavin Seim. From the bridge, Twin Cities MN. Time Exposure.
This was about a year ago now, during our Fall 2010 road trip and my visit to the Twin Cities to teach an HDR workshop. I was walking with my group downtown, crossing over a bridge, the name of which escapes me. It’s big city here. industry and concrete. But flowing water always mesmerizes me. I took my time setting up, feeling that if I hurried I would get little more than a snapshot. In the end my effort paid off in this long exposure just between St. Paul and Minneapolis. The structures of the city meeting with the awesome power of the water and doing a dance right in front of my lens.
Release Details: Prints Coming Soon… Contact Gavin for details.
River Forks, Snoqualmie National Forest, Summer 2011. Non released example image, 8 minute exposure at ISO 100.
This is for you photographers. It’s an 8 minute exposure I did just after sunset on the river. I processed it with the Velvius preset from Power Workflow3. It’s not a stunning image and that’s not why I posted it. I felt it was a good image to use to talk a bit about pixel science.
To me, what merits discussion is the noise. I’ve done images much longer than 8 minutes. The longer the exposure, the more potential for noise to be generated as the sensor heats up. But, as myself and some others have found, the warmer the environment, the worse it seems to get. It was probably in the low 70’s here in the mountains, and the warmer temperature seemed to make a great deal of difference compared to images I’ve done in cooler environments.
Look at the image and the crop section I posted below. The noise produces a banding-like effect on the frame that really reduces quality. The large color artifacts are easy enough to fix, but there’s an almost patterned, under-the-surface noise that really is a challenge. And this was with in camera long exposure reduction turned ON.
I talked about this type of noise in depth in the making of 140 Minutes of Night ( 2+ hour long exposure) and looked at techniques to deal with it, but it’s not easy to correct. When you get into bad heat noise, the plethora of noise plugins and tools we have won’t just take it away. Well, they will, but only at the cost of losing a lot of detail everywhere else. And that’s just not acceptable.
The morning air is fresh and the dew moistened earth speaks of the night gone by. Water tumbles down the Split Rock river and past the bank on which I stand as the treetops gently toss their heads into the breeze of morning, whispering of what lies beyond on the far banks.
This may not be my most astounding image, but there’s something tranquil about it that keeps me coming back. We had camped at Spit Rock Park in Garretson SD the night before. I got up after sunrise and took some time planning what I felt would be the best of this scene. The result is this silky long exposure with the blurred treetops giving a further sense of motion. I’ve given a lot of thought to how this could be it’s best before posting, but in the end I like it simple and refined.
This one was made a few weeks back. It was a drippy day during this years HDR workshop in Minnesota. We stopped by Taylor Falls during our excursion and took a photo walk through the park along the St. Croix River. Light was not at it’s best, but we did our best as we discussed with each other how we might work certain scenes to fit our style and get something worth printing.
We were about ready to move on, when someone found this viewpoint. There was the Queen, resting majestically along the riverbank and waiting for the sun. I’m was told it’s not stopped here often. It immediately struck a chord with me. There was something here to photograph. I setup the gear for a long exposure, taking the time to carefully plan and get it right. It payed off with this photo as the result. It’s going to look great on a metal or canvas and will appear in the signature collection soon. I’m stoked.
As promised here’s another shot from my recent trip down to the Leavenworth area to shoot nature around the Wenatchee River. This is a few miles up Highway 2, right by the bridge I posted last week.The color and vibrancy of nature in the fall is always so amazing. God sure knows his colors. This is one of my High dynamic range pieces with a few of my effects added. To get the broad range of light I use the tones from three images taken at different brightness levels.
