Thanks all for the comments, glad you like the shots
I would ask if you have them in their original (or at least a much larger) size to use as desktop images and a screensaver but you probably think I'll just try and sell them somewhere.
It's nice of you to ask, and I'm glad you like them, but about a year ago I stopped doing that because I was starting to make money through licensing and print sales, and I couldn't justify giving away my images to anyone who asked.
I know it makes me sound like an ass, and it's not that I don't trust you (besides, it's hard enough to make money from the full res image, let alone a 1600 pixel wide 72dpi version for wallpaper) it's just a point of principle. I don't give my images away anymore.
Sorry it that makes me come across like a jerk, but thanks again for the comments.
sid said:
If I want to take a long exposure shot of a waterfall to get the cotton like effect, how do I avoid over exposing?
Looks like you've got plenty of good advice here, but try to think of it like this:
Light is like water, and you need to control the quantity of light you're letting onto your sensor.
You do this with your aperture and your shutter time (lets forget ISO for the moment, keep it at the lowest setting).
Now, imagine a funnel and a cup of water. If you pour that water into a funnel with a really narrow neck, it's going to take a while to pass through. If you pour the same quantity of water through a funnel with a really wide neck, then it's going to pass through really quickly.
Well, the aperture is the same as the size of the neck of the funnel. Close it down really small (f22 for example) and the light will take longer to pass through...so you'll need a longer shutter time to blur movement.
How long you need depends on how much light there is at the scene, but a good time for waterfalls is around half a second to a second. If you can't get that sort of time with the smallest aperture, you can either look into the neutral density filters that a few people have linked to above, or you can simply shoot when light levels are lower. Try doing the shot at dusk, when there's no direct light on the scene, but there's still enough light in the sky to bring the colours out (a few moments after sunset is good for this).
007 said:
You're thinking of a polarizer. A polorizer has light reducing properties but its not quite what I had in mind. ND filter just makes everything darker by reducing the amount of light that passes through it
Actually, no he's right. He is describing an ND filter, he's just talking about referring to an ND graduated filter, which is only dark across half of it's surface. A polarizer is a completely different kind of thing...although fully polarized it will still cut out around 2 stops of light...which make it useful for longer exposures (if you don't mind the side effects it has on reflections and colour saturation).