The Lone Tree

This photo was taken at Llyn Padarn, Caernarfon in Wales (8/4/23). I put the location high on the list for my last day in Wales having been sent the pin from a friend the night before.  Unfortunately, with one day left, and the need to get to Holyhead for the boat home meant I had to 'make do' with a less than ideal time of day for taking the shot.  Conditions were challenging, shooting into the sun, and waiting for many passersby to take their selfie.  Canoes and paddle boards also added to less than peaceful shot I desired. 

 

I normally give settings for all my photos in this blog but this one is not easy to give.  The top half of the image is from one shot while the bottom half is from another shot.  Let's start with the equipment used, my trusted Canon R6, with my 24-70 mm EF mount lens was on my Peak Design tripod.  I used NiSi polarizer, soft grad and ND 3 and 6 stop (bottom of the shot).  The settings for the lake were a shutter speed of 320 sec with an aperture of f20 and ISO 100.  The settings for the sky and upper portion of the shot were a shutter speed of 1/40 sec with an aperture of f11 and ISO 100.  The need to merge two images was due to significant flare in the sky when the filters were used and movement blurred the upper branches of the tree in the slowest exposure. 

I copied the top part of one image into the other image in Photoshop.  I still had flare to remove from the sky but thankfully in that shot it was clear of the tree and I could use the spot removal tool in camera raw.  I used the camera raw filter in Photoshop to significantly edit the merged image.