{"id":8777,"date":"2014-11-17T20:17:28","date_gmt":"2014-11-17T09:17:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alexwisephotography.net\/blog\/?p=8777"},"modified":"2015-04-04T13:24:57","modified_gmt":"2015-04-04T02:24:57","slug":"secret-falls-tasmania","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alexwisephotography.net\/blog\/2014\/11\/17\/secret-falls-tasmania\/","title":{"rendered":"Before and After – Secret Falls, Tasmania"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Secret<\/a>
Secret Falls, Tasmania<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Secret Falls has been on my to photo list for some time after visiting it a few years ago with a friend when bushwalking through the area sans camera. It\u2019s a beautiful little waterfall that does live up to its name even if the location isn\u2019t really quite a secret if the amount of people photographing it is anything to go by\u2026<\/p>\n

The location of Secret Falls is a ‘secret’ and probably best not published here but I’m happy to disclose if you drop me an email.<\/p>\n

[twentytwenty]<\/p>\n

\"IMG_9660<\/a> \"IMG_9661<\/a><\/p>\n

[\/twentytwenty]<\/p>\n

Taking the photograph<\/h2>\n

Based on the popularity and small size of the waterfall it made things especially difficult to get a unique take on the waterfall. Something as photographers, we are forever striving for, to get our own unique capture of a scene. With this in mind, I decided to get a bit wet and assemble some rocks in the middle of the foreground with the intention of capturing a long exposure that would blur the water as it passed the rocks. Are moving rocks around in a scene to create a composition cheating and take away the authenticity of a scene? I\u2019d argue no but would be interested to hear if others feel otherwise.<\/p>\n

With the scene setup, I set up my gear (Canon 5D Mark II,<\/a> Canon 24-70<\/a>, Hoya circular polariser and manfrotto tripod<\/a>) and began taking some test shots of the scene. It\u2019s interesting, a friend and I were having a discussion recently about focus stacking and the notion of using multiple photographs at varying focus levels to maximize the sharpness of an image. I laughed it off and said it would be rare for me to ever need to do this but what do you know, a week later, I was putting the theory into practice swallowing my naysaying words and using the technique for this shot. The reason I opted to focus stack this image was the difficulty in having both the foreground and background rocks sharp. Generally, shooting wide with an ultra wide angle lens and high depth of field (f\/11 onwards) it\u2019s rare to run into this issue but by using the 24-70 which isn\u2019t quite as wide my normal go to lens, the Canon 17-40, it was difficult to get the whole scene in focus.<\/p>\n

Focus Stacking<\/h3>\n

Focus stacking works under the same principal as exposure blending in which your camera is set up on a tripod and you take various exposures or in this case, different focus levels which is then selectively combined into the final image. For this image of Secret Falls, I took a reading in aperture priority mode and got a reading at f\/13. This gave me an exposure time of 25 seconds. I changed the camera to manual mode and dialed in f\/13 and 25 seconds. The reason for changing to manual mode is to avoid any variation in exposure that aperture priority may have introduced. With the camera set in manual mode, I focused the image on the foreground rocks and then took another image with the focus selected on the background. This left me with two images that I would then need to blend in Photoshop.<\/p>\n

Processing the Images<\/h2>\n

Getting the photo as right as much as you can when taking the photo\u00a0makes post processing the image far more easier. By using a circular polariser when capturing the photos, this increased the saturation slightly, reduced glare on the water and allowed me to get a longer exposure time. With the two images captured loaded in Photoshop (one with the background in focus and another of the rock in focus) I loaded both images into Photoshop and made the following changes.<\/p>\n