Reflections on Water

Well, here come my offerings for this month. As Richard so astutely pointed out, with clouds hanging low and pendulous with precipitation, there was going to be no shortage of the wet stuff lying around waiting to be photographed. I tried to avoid the obvious 'taxi plunging through puddle', because there's plenty of those circulating on the interwebs.

Gate

Nikon D70s
Sigma 50mm
F/2.8 1/45s

Tried to get some symmetry here, with the gate lights and their reflections in the puddle. The hosepipe also counts as 'water', partly because I liked the splash of contrasting colour and also because I wasn't about to clone it out. That treatment was reserved for the obtrusive red 'No Parking' sign on the wall opposite the gate.

Minaret

Nikon D70s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 112mm
F/16 1/60s

Having retrieved my camera from the car, I was heading back into the office with intent to take a particular shot that I had in mind. Whilst that shot never happened, I saw the minaret reflected in a puddle and liked the texture. I simply inverted the image.

Anchored

Nikon D70s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 170mm
F/5.6 1/250s

Dubai Boat Show offered plenty of opportunities for 'Water' as the subject matter. I tweaked up the red gelcoat using a mask so that the red would 'pop' without the water developing a reddish colour cast.

Bow

Nikon D70s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 29mm
F/4.2 1/20s
Auto ISO

More Boat Show. It got dark, and I knew from experience that tripods on floating boats and pontoons is a recipe for camera shake, even if some oaf doesn't kick it all into the oggin. So I used the trick of setting the film speed (on a DSLR - Hahaha!) to Auto so that I could hand-hold the camera. There's a little bit of cropping and cloning to get rid of distracting bright lights. Look at the symmetry of the boat in the water, and also note the metalwork at the waterline that just hints of Poseidon's trident.

Reflections

Nikon D70s
Nikkor 18-200 @ 38mm
F/4.8 1/10s
Auto ISO

Again, hand-held in the dark (don't you just love vibration-reduction lenses?) at the Boat Show. The whole frame is of a sexily lit speedboat, but I thought the coloured reflections were more interesting. The graininess is caused by the high 'film speed' and also the cropping.

I should also note that I wanted to freeze the ripples in the water, so long shutter speeds that would allow blurring were something I actively sought to avoid.