Metamorphosis - a photo on Flickriver

Metamorphosis

This image was captured beside the eastern of the two Pen Ponds at the centre of Richmond Park, on the same morning when I'd previously captured a view of the larger western pond. While the earlier image had been captured facing away from the sun, this image was taken 10 minutes later, a stone's throw away and facing directly towards the sun as it emerged from behind the hills in the distance. Despite the light gathering on the horizon, a dense layer of fog descended over the park and intensified as the sun came up, obscuring the surrounding landscape and making for a cold, mysterious and wonderfully atmospheric tone.

Despite the early hour and the peaceful location at the heart of the park's 2,360 acres, I was in the company of half a dozen fellow photographers who were equally captivated by the scene unfolding before us. I was lucky enough to come away with three long exposures before the sun rose -- one lasting a minute, another lasting just under 80 seconds, and a third lasting two minutes -- with each exposure containing elements that I knew I'd later incorporate into a single image. Using luminosity masks, I lifted the heavy fog along the pond from the middle exposure and blended this with the initial exposure, which had perfectly captured the warm light on the horizon behind the hills. I then isolated the shadows from the third and final exposure, which contained a brighter capture of the tree in the foreground, as well as a slightly clearer reflection in the water.

Having blended the exposures for a balanced finish, I colour-graded the image using a combination of Curves, Levels and Colour Balance adjustments with layer masks created via Apply Image. My aim was a darker and moodier tone compared with my previous take of the park's companion pond, so I added a low-opacity Colour Lookup set to Soft Light and using the Foggy Night preset, which gently lowered the exposure of the image and added a blue tone to the shadows and midtones. At the same time, I applied a warm tone to the sunrise using a gradient map that targeted the highlights in the image, as well as a gentle exposure layer to brighten the tree.

The smooth texture and soft colours in the scene seemed to contrast nicely with the dark and intricate tree at the centre of the pond, and inside Colour Efex Pro I used the Detail Extractor filter to emphasise the definition of the branches, as well as the Tonal Contrast filter to lower the structure, clarity and contrast across the water, the hills and the sky. This stage of the workflow was focused on minor details, essentially just tweaking components of a scene that was a joy to behold and which struck me as beautiful straight out of the camera, but these details were important to me: I felt that the light on the horizon, the fog over the pond and the tree at the centre of the frame would be vying for the viewer's attention, which meant that balancing the exposure, tone and clarity of these elements might make or break the image. Getting that balance right was a fun process, but in the end what made the image a joy to edit was the memory of the location on a beautiful morning as much as the process of bringing out its soft, foggy and dramatic details on screen.

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Taken on: October 22, 2016

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Camera: Nikon D800, f/11.0, 79 sec, 42mm, ISO 50 (more info) (hide info)

Camera:	Nikon D800
Lens:	24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8
Aperture:	f/11.0
Exposure Time:	79
Focal Length:	42mm
ISO:	50
Exposure Bias:	+1 EV
Flash:	Off, Did not fire
Exposure Program:	Manual
Exposure Mode:	Manual
Metering Mode:	Multi-segment
White Balance:	Auto
Sharpness:	Hard
Color Space:	sRGB
Software:	Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 6.6.1 (Windows)
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