Make Your Reflections Look Natural

Canon 1DsMKIII, 16-35mmL @ f/16, 1/10th second shutter, 100 ISO, Singh-Ray 2-stop soft graduated neutral density filter.

One of my favorite types of images to photograph in Yosemite Valley is reflections. The best time of the year is in the fall as the Merced River is reduced to calm pools. My second most favorite time is winter, generally in the early morning just as the sun begins to strike many of the monolith granite giants that reside along the northern side of the Valley floor. When I first started photographing reflections, I often returned disappointed with my results. Why? Well, the reflection looked too balanced and that is not the way they appear in nature. Thus, I really made a serious attempt to study the way a reflection appears naturally to the eye. I have deduced that in most instances, reflections should appear about one-stop darker than the object that is reflecting. Sounds simple enough, but I see so many images (both amateur and professional) where this is just not the case.

I believe part of the problem, at least in the film days, resided with my attempts at selecting the proper strength graduated neutral density filter. If I chose too strong of a grad, my image would appear too balanced, or even worse, a reflection that was brighter than the object it was reflecting. With digital, the problem is easily adjusted in post (though I try to get it right at the point of capture). For this scene of an early winter morning in Yosemite Valley, an overnight snow storm gave way to clearing skies and the rising sun warmed the face of El Capitan and cast its golden reflection into the placid Merced River. I metered the sun-lit portion of the snow-covered hill (just to the left of El Capitan) then metered its reflection and deduced that I would need to use a 2-stop soft GND to control the contrast. I dialed in what I felt was the proper polarization and this was the result:

Using a Singh-Ray 2-stop GND balance the image but made the reflection as bright as the face of El Capitan resulting in an unnatural looking reflection.

In my LCD the reflection appeared natural and the histogram read correctly; yet, as you can see, the scene looked too balanced and unnatural (remember, the reflection should appear about one-stop less than the object it is reflecting). In film days, I would have had to live with my miscalculation. But we photographers have been liberated somewhat and I can now deal with this imbalance in post-processing. Though there are many ways to go about this, here is how I dealt with the issue:

First. I duplicated my original then in the Layers blend-mode box, I selected Multiply.

I then added a mask by clicking on the third icon from the left on the bottom of the Layers palette. By default, the mask will appear white. Here is how the image now appears (note this screen shot does not include the mask but at this stage I just want you to see how applying a Multiply layer will darken your image): NOTE – Click on any of these screen shots to get a larger preview.

By choosing Multiply, I have darkened the overall image by minus-one stop. I now allowed my eye to only look at the reflection as that is what I need to lighten (we’ll deal with the top-half of the image later). I simply reduced the opacity of the Multiply by 1/2 stop by moving the Layer palette Opacity slider to 50%.

With the mask in place on the duplicated layer, I next selected my brush tool, (make sure the black and white color palette on the bottom of the tool palette has the black square over the white square), and made sure the opacity slider in the option bar was set to 100%. Next, I simply brushed away the top portion of the image to reveal my original exposure of El Capitan. This now made the reflection appear just a tad bit darker than the 1-stop I desired so I simply moved the opacity slider (in the Layer palette) down from 50% to 35% and achieved a reflection that appeared natural to my eye!

The result is a more natural looking reflection and closer to how it really appeared in nature. Lastly, I opened the image into Nik Software’s Viveza 2 to knock-down the brightness of the sun-lit snow at the bottom left of El Capitan. Remember, the eye will first gravitate the the brightest area of the scene, so a bit of tonal control was needed to make that section of the image less-noticeable. Also remember to knock down the reflected potion also or it will appear unbalanced.

So the next time you are out shooting reflections, really become a student of the reflection. Look at the tonal relationship between the object that is being reflected and the reflection itself and strive to capture the naturalness of that relationship. Also, remember to focus on the object and not the reflection itself even though the reflection is very close (in most instances). Thus, if the object is at infinity (such as El Capitan is in this scene) then that is where the correct focus point should be to get a sharp reflection!

 Category: Landscape Photography      Tagged: El Capitan, graduated neutral density filters, Merced River, photographing reflections, Reflections, tonal relationships, winter, Yosemite

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