3rd Scottish POTN Meet - 'Dragons on the Water'

Another shot from the third meet.
This was quite a challenge.
We were at the 'Enchanted Forest' at Faskally on Sunday Night.
7 of us also attended the Press Launch on Thursday Night and struggled to get the flames in the water due to the long exposures so we had another bash at it on Sunday.

For this shot, I took several 'faster'exposures for the flames and picked the best of the bunch then a longer exposure when they had finished.

I created a channel mask from the flames and pasted the selection into the long exposure.

Byte size: ZERO | Content warning: NOT AN IMAGE

Make them a bit transparent Steve on the edges, flames are rarely pure solids especially when you have bright lights behind them. Not sure how this one would work, but try and get the flames to 'capture' a bit of the ambient light.

However apart from that good attempt, it wasn't that hard was it

Thanks Rob...I did try to make them more transparent, but they got 'lost' in the composition due to the distance.

I did take a few shots from a closer angle, but the final long exposure didn't work out so I binned that series.

Can't wait to see your version...you looked very pleased with yourself on the night!!!

Steve, is it just me, or does that middle flame really look like a Dragons head? Long neck, head looking to the left, eye, and two ears!

Great capture of the colours. But not sure if people who werent there will realise that there are three flames shooting up from the water, and how difficult it was to capture (well for me anyway)

Steve, I'm not sure about this one, and while I know that balancing the flame/night exposure was tricky, I think making them slightly brighter might help. I would also be tempted to crop slightly in order to make the flames a bigger proportion of the photo.

Wow, amazing! I would just heal brush that branch out and lower the ISO next time.

I really like the colors.

steve

i really like this shot and the refelections are spot on

its a keeper

very surreal, nice!!

zebedee wrote in post #2161988
Great capture of the colours. But not sure if people who werent there will realise that there are three flames shooting up from the water, and how difficult it was to capture (well for me anyway)

Thanks Dave.
Mike threw down the gauntlet and I couldn't resist the challenge!
Rob (Faolan) got some excellent takes on the scene from a closer angle with much more natural looking flames.

rudgej wrote in post #2162068
I think making them slightly brighter might help. I would also be tempted to crop slightly in order to make the flames a bigger proportion of the photo.

Good points John and I tend to agree.
I was concentrating so hard on avoiding the blurry glow on the flames I didn't stand back from it all.
I think a tighter crop would have been better...there's too much lost space going on.

JasonMX wrote in post #2162211
Wow, amazing! I would just heal brush that branch out and lower the ISO next time.

Thanks Jason.
I deliberately left the top branches in the shot to add some interest to the empty space and I liked the light on them, but in retrospect, it's too distracting.
I'd been shooting at ISO100 or 200 all night...can't remember how I ended up on ISO400 on this one

Mike/Catsith...thanks for your comments!

Very nice Steve,good capture with well balanced colours.

What's a 'channel mask'?

Mike Bell wrote in post #2168346
What's a 'channel mask'?

A little complicated to explain quickly Mike, but I'll endeavour to knock together a video tutorial by the weekend, you need to see it in action on a worked example.

Basically, a channel mask is used to select very fine detail (it is often used to select fine strands of hair for instance)

You switch to the channels tab and select the R, G or B channel that offers the most contrast.
You duplicate that channel and apply a levels adjustment to it, pulling the left and right sliders inwards to 'posterise' it whilst retaining fine edge detail.

There are a few intermediate steps to fine tune it, but you basically reselect the original RGB Channel, switch back to layers, then go to Select/Load Selection and select the copied channel wich then creates a 'marching ant' selection around the detail you require.
You can then cut/copy/paste that selection etc.

Er ............... thanks, Steve ...............er.....​..........yeah, thanks.........

EDIT: It's all right Steve. Someone has pointed me in the direction of a book by Dan Margulis that apparently will explain all this stuff to me. I just ordered it from Amazon.

Pretty neat shots!