Reflective Landscape - The Fallen

Long exposure photography has many advantages, one of them being the ability to smooth out movement. The water in the river above was flowing at a slow rate with an occasional ripple. This photograph was taken at an 8 second exposure on a tripod. The mirror like reflection was the side effect of the long exposure.

The accumulation of the fall leaves at the edge of the river bank is what drew me to this composition. The over all image was taken at ISO100, f/16, 1/8s, this exposed the water, trees and sky above. A second image taken with focus on the foreground, the lens focused up close at the leaves and shot at ISO100, f/8, 1/8s this brightened up the leaves in the foreground and the focus was tack sharp.

Both images were taken on a tripod without any camera movement, so alignment was not an issue. In Adobe Photoshop I masked the lower portion of the first image out and feathered in the foreground image. The resulting image was corrected for white balance, level, saturation and contrast.