I first noticed this scene from the road. Walking over a bridge provides this lovely view of South Fork Quantico Creek in Prince William Forest Park. It was late June of 2021 and all the various shades of green were present. A fallen tree spanned the width of the creek, which I sometimes find distracting but other times find an appealing addition to a composition. In either case, it is what it is, so better to find a way to work with it.

As for settings, I was using a 16-35mm lens at 27mm. I set the aperture to f/16 and the shutter speed to 1.6 seconds with an ISO of 100. The camera was mounted on a tripod to let me get the longer shutter speed. By doing that I was hoping to smooth out any movements in the slow moving creek and accentuate the reflections.

There’s a trail along the left side of the creek and after hiking down to the trail I still found myself attracted by the same scene, just seen from a different perspective. When down closer to the water I noticed how with a little careful movement I could place the lit up greenery in the background within a triangle of sorts formed by the fallen tree and reflections of a tree in the background. I liked that. It let me work with the fallen tree to create what I thought was a pleasing composition. The sun cooperated by highlighting the background greenery along the shore.

Once again, I was trying to smooth out the water to accentuate the reflections so I used similar settings. Still at ISO 100 but this time at 35mm and f/18 with a shutter speed of 2.5 seconds. I liked this composition even more than the previous one. It focused in on a smaller section of the scene and I liked the framing of the lighter greenery.

I suppose this is an example of working a scene. Instead of planting the tripod in one spot and creating photographs of a single view of a scene, move around, see what other options are present, explore the various ways you can frame the scene. What other perspectives are available?

From a technical perspective these are not perfect photos. Each one is a little soft. The fallen tree could have been tack sharp but it isn’t. I’m not sure exactly why. I don’t know if I might have had some tripod movement. One likely culprit is forgetting to turn off the vibration reduction feature of the lens when I put it on the tripod and locked it down. Walking between scenes I’m usually handholding the camera so I’ll turn vibration reduction on, something that’s especially helpful for someone with essential tremors. But when I put the camera on the tripod and lock it down I need to remember to turn off vibration reduction. Otherwise it can actually introduce movement during the exposure, which might have resulted in the slight softness present in each of these.

So given the overall softness I figured why not experiment with another version of the photograph that pushes that softness, adding a bit more of a glow to it, creating something that perhaps has a more painterly, less realistic, look? The photo below is the result of that experimentation.

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