Smoothing out water shots

realspeed

realspeed

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Bazza
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Ok many won't agree with me but its up for discussion. Please don't shoot me down

My pet hate is photographs that show moving water as " milk" due to time exposure. Why on earth do it? you never ever see it in real life so why in photographs?

If a picture is going to be messed about like this then why not go the whole hog and make the picture a complete abstract by stretching and distorting, this I could understand.

Water is like a living subject, always on the move so why not depict it as such. Ripples and waves add so much and bring the picture to life, doing a time exposure takes this all away.

Yes some say its artistic licence and makes a picture surreal but to my mind its just an excuse for being unable to set a fast shutter speed

Realspeed
 
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I understand when oyu say that the image has been altered, but I think that saying it is an excuse for not seting the right shutter speed is just asking for a fight:) For most amaters (I am one;)) its a lot harder to acheive the milkyness of the water and the sharp focus of all around it.

Its similar to HDR in that the image is played with and altered, but then most of us alter things outside of the camera, whether its just the contrast and a crop or full blown pp effects, it very rare that an image is pure. Milky water is done with pre meditation, the settings are thought out and chosen specifically, as opposed to (What I do;)...) loading images into a computer then deciding on what PP will best rescue what you have:thinking:

Just think of it as marmite, but regardless of if you like the end effects, it is certainly a skill to get it right

Just my thoughts:)

Wendy
 
I'm a fan though I can see the other side of the argument. It's very much about personal taste, realistic vs. surrealistic.

I do absolutely reject the idea that it's an excuse for not being able to set a fast shutter time though. In fact I'd say the opposite is true. In daylight at least it's can require quite a lot of effort to slow shutter speed down enough to smooth water out. People don't spend £200 on 10 stop filters for nothing, it's certainly not because they have given up trying to achieve fast shutter speeds.

I do not see it being any different to having a little motion blur in motorsports shots. It's not what the eye sees, but it tells a story. Photography is an art after all.

To me at least, good photos don't have to convey what the eye sees. There are loads of occasions where I've cropped something out of a shot that would have completely changed the feel/ambience of the picture and maybe the finished image isn't what the eye could see at the time but it should be what I want the picture to be.
 
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realspeed said:
.......but to my mind its just an excuse for being unable to set a fast shutter speed

Realspeed
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As Wendy says, most people have done the setting to get the effect, rather than not being able to get a fast shutter speed. For me, it's all down to preference, some shots are good with the motion frozen others work better with the milk!
 
My 2p, FWIW. I like moving/time-effect water shots but they're easily overdone. There is a balance to be struck between allowing the water's movement to be expressed and retaining at least some of the textures that really long exposures otherwise eliminate.

And reiterating what others have said - it's all a matter of personal taste. No rights or wrongs.
 
grum said:
I'm not really sure what your point is, other than 'I don't like it'.

'People in liking different things shocker'.
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That is exactly my point, if photograhers want to do abstract then fair enough, but to only go half way and only mess with the way water looks is neither one nor the other. Maybe I just like to be able to see what the photographer sees to make the shot worth taking, if the picture is worth taking why try and alter it? seems daft to me. Yes by all mean improve it in PP as that won't radically alter the photo.

Realspeed
 
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realspeed said:
Yes some say its artistic licence and makes a picture surreal but to my mind its just an excuse for being unable to set a fast shutter speed

Realspeed
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I accept that it's down to us all as individuals to decide whether we like the look of 'milky water' or not. Sometimes I like it as it can accentuate the path of the water through a scene or just bring a sense of movement. Other times I like water 'frozen' - there's no right or wrong.

As for it being and excuse for not being able to set a fast shutter speed :thinking:

Freezing water with a fast shutter speed isn't difficult in fact you wouldn't even need to bother with your tripod if the light was good. It's far more of a challenge to decide what depth of focus you want, how much movement you want in the water, how much movement you don't want in overhanging branches or tall wispy grass - then balance aperture, shutter speed and choice of ND filter to get your exposure correct.
 
realspeed said:
if the picture is worth taking why try and alter it? seems daft to me. Yes by all mean improve it in PP as that won't radically alter the photo.

Realspeed
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Its not altering the picture, its changing the perception of the scene? As stated earlier in the thread, a simple crop can radically change not only the picture as a whole but also the perception, the intention and the story within. Cloning out undesirable parts of a shot can have the same effect, whilst other techniques used deliberaltay alter the image such as tilt and shift or smoothing out skin in portraits. Unless you only produce 'pure' images, which I doubt many of us do, images are always altered, bits here, and bits there, sometime subtle, sometime radical, not always to everyones taste.

Where would be the fun if all the water looked normal? I enjoy photography and enjoy how diverse it is, whilst I may not like ceratin tecniques, from the basic beginner with a p&s to a professional tog who takes photography to an art extreme, I certainly acknowledge and respect the effort and skill used each and every time.

Wendy
 
wilmorh said:
Its not altering the picture, its changing the perception of the scene? As stated earlier in the thread, a simple crop can radically change not only the picture as a whole but also the perception, the intention and the story within. Cloning out undesirable parts of a shot can have the same effect, whilst other techniques used deliberaltay alter the image such as tilt and shift or smoothing out skin in portraits. Unless you only produce 'pure' images, which I doubt many of us do, images are always altered, bits here, and bits there, sometime subtle, sometime radical, not always to everyones taste.

Where would be the fun if all the water looked normal? I enjoy photography and enjoy how diverse it is, whilst I may not like ceratin tecniques, from the basic beginner with a p&s to a professional tog who takes photography to an art extreme, I certainly acknowledge and respect the effort and skill used each and every time.

Wendy
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:plusone:

couldnt really say it any better.

what drew me to this forum, was all the different images and they ways of tackling photography. Nice to see diversity in the images everyone produces
 
some peeps are colour blind, I dunno what that means within the context of this thread..:shrug:

I dunno, I kinda think that milky water is ok, I mean it happened, its not like you take a digital file and throw it through PS and re arrange everything the sensor captured.
I'd have much more of an issue with the removal of telegraph wires using say....photo elements 9 and content aware healing :)
 
realspeed said:
My pet hate is photographs that show moving water as " milk" due to time exposure. Why on earth do it? you never ever see it in real life so why in photographs?
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Interesting discussion.

Our eyes see at approximately 10-12 images a second so you don't actually see what's happening, only an approximation. Obvious examples are water splashing, raindrops, a balloon bursting etc.

So if we accept that we can photograph at faster than our eyes can see with fast shutter speeds, why not slow?
 
Byker28i said:
Interesting discussion.

Our eyes see at approximately 10-12 images a second so you don't actually see what's happening, only an approximation. Obvious examples are water splashing, raindrops, a balloon bursting etc.

So if we accept that we can photograph at faster than our eyes can see with fast shutter speeds, why not slow?
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OOoh, very good!:clap: I like:D

Just a quick thing, this showed on the main oage throughout the day, but now it doesn't?
 
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realspeed said:
Please don't shoot me down
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I won't!!

I can understand where you're coming from, even if I tend to disagree! Slow shutter water shots are quite fashionable right now, especially square B/W's but they're popular as they're very effective for creating simple graphical images.

I find water shots frozen in time, harsh and unrealistic as water always moves, and the sharpness of static water in images makes me feel like I'm looking at rippled glass, or beads of glass - a harsh, hard material, rather than a soft liquid I could dive into! Alot of long exposure seascapes have piers or buildings or rocks sitting in the water - having milky soft water in those type of shots focuses the attention on the elements living in the sea - quite often they'll be the subject, rather than the sea itself.

That said, a faster shutter speed (not to freeze motion, but not long enough to make water milky and soft) can give the sense of power water can have. If you're trying to convey a storm, then a soft long exposure wouldn't perhaps feel right. There aren't any rights or wrongs, just simply as you're showing, personal subjectivity.
 
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Its all about Artistic License.
The liberty taken by an artist (Photographer) in deviating from conventional form or fact to achieve a desired effect.:thumbs:
 
I have to admit I do like to blur water a bit, I used to do a lot of 10-stop exposures but I have stopped of late as I think it's so overused that it's very hard to be creative and/or different now.

These days I prefer a 0.5 or 1s exposure on the water just to give it some motion but still have some shape. Not a massive fan of a fast exposure as I don't think it's particularly attractive.

Always remember if it works for you then sod what anyone else thinks :-)
 
I think it's a technique most like to try, it's a good way to learn. in some cases it does enhance a photograph, and in others it doesn't. I think it works well in situations where there isn't a great water flow as it can exaggerate how full the stream is

Personally, I like the look of water that has been captured with a fast shutter speed but that's because I like to see the shapes that are produced that we can't see just by looking (have just gone through my first water-drops attempt)
 
Simmotino said:
My eyes don't see in black and white....
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and my eyes don't see in 3:2 portrait format either, but it doesn't stop me framing shots like that all the time.

Question to the OP: Is it just the depiction of water that irritates you in this way, or all long exposure photography (star trails, etc.)?

Would you be equally irritated by somebody using a 19th century wet plate photographic process on a large format camera that gave an exposure time in minutes? How does this differ philosophically from using a 10 stop filter on a modern camera?

Photography is about the capture of time as well as light. On many occasions that will be an instant measured in fractions of a second - Cartier-Bresson's 'decisive moment', but that may also be about periods of seconds, minutes, hours or even months with some pinhole cameras. The photographer's choice about what period the shutter is open will reveal different aspects of the reality in front of the lens.
 
realspeed said:
Ok many won't agree with me but its up for discussion. Please don't shoot me down

My pet hate is photographs that show moving water as " milk" due to time exposure. Why on earth do it? you never ever see it in real life so why in photographs?

If a picture is going to be messed about like this then why not go the whole hog and make the picture a complete abstract by stretching and distorting, this I could understand.

Water is like a living subject, always on the move so why not depict it as such. Ripples and waves add so much and bring the picture to life, doing a time exposure takes this all away.

Yes some say its artistic licence and makes a picture surreal but to my mind its just an excuse for being unable to set a fast shutter speed

Realspeed
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What an odd idea you have of art and photography.

So, as an Am. Astronomer you would not think I should shoot star trails for a hobby as we don't "see" star trails only pinpoints, we don't see black and white (monochrome) so that means according to you we must shoot real time only in colour.

Weh.... God forbid we should try Infra Red...
 
It is all down to taste and photography is all about opinions.
Personally I like milky water, IR, HDR, but I am not keen on B&W. However I do appreciate the skill that some have it producing great B&W images, but I would rather look at milky water shots any day:D
As for marmite:gag:
 
Peter10d said:
It is all down to taste and photography is all about opinions.
Personally I like milky water, IR, HDR, but I am not keen on B&W. However I do appreciate the skill that some have it producing great B&W images, but I would rather look at milky water shots any day:D
As for marmite:gag:
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Have you ever tried a Marmite and banana sandwich
 
realspeed said:
Ok many won't agree with me but its up for discussion. Please don't shoot me down

My pet hate is photographs that show moving water as " milk" due to time exposure. Why on earth do it? you never ever see it in real life so why in photographs?

If a picture is going to be messed about like this then why not go the whole hog and make the picture a complete abstract by stretching and distorting, this I could understand.

Water is like a living subject, always on the move so why not depict it as such. Ripples and waves add so much and bring the picture to life, doing a time exposure takes this all away.

Yes some say its artistic licence and makes a picture surreal but to my mind its just an excuse for being unable to set a fast shutter speed

Realspeed
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In fact it's the frozen in time shot of water you never see in real life, the water is actually moving, the slow shutter speed helps give the impression of movement.
If you personally don't like it fair enough, don't do it. Me I like it.
 
Just spotted this piece of work:http://www.manjarisharma.com/theshowerseries.html

For the last few months I have been inviting people to visit my apartment and allow me to photograph them in a very intimate space; my bathroom. I have also been inviting them to take a shower as I continue to shoot them. I soon came to the observation that warm water running over my subjects bodies often relieved them of any unnerving awkwardness the camera brought about. Once they were relaxed, the bathroom, formerly a beauty parlour, now became a confessional and I the hair dresser. Many of my subjects shared intimate details of their life with me and every new person in the shower became a brand new allegory. With every new visit I had a new protagonist; A new plot and a new parable of hurt and heroic that came undone under that shower - My Shower. I felt a personal mythology was being shared, an independent study that I got addicted to.

Secretly I have been told by my subjects that it is thrilling and adventuresome to be in my shower; Secretly cheating my traditional and tame Indian upbringing I live through all of my subjects; Fighting their wars and braving their fears for those few hours where we are connected through this pious space. I continue to investigate this enthralling photo project which has thus far given rise to some of the fastest., most disarming relationships I have formed. I look forward to these images leading the way as the project continues.

There's a lovely use of light plus different shutter speeds in recording the water.
 
Byker28i said:
Just spotted this piece of work:http://www.manjarisharma.com/theshowerseries.html

For the last few months I have been inviting people to visit my apartment and allow me to photograph them in a very intimate space; my bathroom. I have also been inviting them to take a shower as I continue to shoot them. I soon came to the observation that warm water running over my subjects bodies often relieved them of any unnerving awkwardness the camera brought about. Once they were relaxed, the bathroom, formerly a beauty parlour, now became a confessional and I the hair dresser. Many of my subjects shared intimate details of their life with me and every new person in the shower became a brand new allegory. With every new visit I had a new protagonist; A new plot and a new parable of hurt and heroic that came undone under that shower - My Shower. I felt a personal mythology was being shared, an independent study that I got addicted to.

Secretly I have been told by my subjects that it is thrilling and adventuresome to be in my shower; Secretly cheating my traditional and tame Indian upbringing I live through all of my subjects; Fighting their wars and braving their fears for those few hours where we are connected through this pious space. I continue to investigate this enthralling photo project which has thus far given rise to some of the fastest., most disarming relationships I have formed. I look forward to these images leading the way as the project continues.

There's a lovely use of light plus different shutter speeds in recording the water.
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Wierd or what :thinking:
 
My take is if its done in camera then its photography, if you then photoshop it then it becomes something very different.

Personally i prefer to do it all in camera that way i can say i took that.

At the end of the day its all down to personal tastes.

Oh and stop with the Kingfishers lol
 
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