Glisten

The great benefit of meeting like-minded people is that you can share ideas and tips. I met another photographer at a local event I covered. I was told about a lake on the outskirts of the town, that I didn’t know about. I visited the lake this afternoon, as the weather was stunning and I wanted to see if it lived up to what I was told; to which is exceeded expectations.

I took this photo as I noticed that another photo I had taken of ducks swimming seemed to have a glistening effect around the waves. I tried to focus solely on this, as the waves lapped against the bank. I used a shutter speed of 1/250 as I wanted the waves to be sharp. I managed to capture the glisten of the water, but the photo seemed uninteresting apart from this, so I decided to use Photoshop.

I increased the contrast and decreased the brightness, in an attempt to make the pattern of the waves more prominent. The colour of the water was dull, so I tried to change this by changing the hue. As I was doing so, I slipped and dragged the slider too far, make the water bright yellow. I liked the effect, but not the colour, so experimented with the hue and saturation till I found this red-purple colour. I then sharpened the image to pick out the individual gleams, and patterns of the waves.

I like the idea of this abstract photograph; I enjoyed taking something simple and using this merely as a base. I plan to take a trip to town tomorrow, as there is a small festival on the harbour side. If not, you may see some of the other things I have up my sleeve.

Bex

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