The Loeb Fountain and the Lee Big Stopper
Wednesday we went to the Loeb Fountain to have some fun. While we were enjoying the fountain I set my camera up on my tripod. The clouds were moving fairly quickly so I knew that it would make things interesting. I set up in a spot that would allow me to get University Hall into the background as well. I wanted to try a photo with the Big Stopper on a subject that I had photographed before. I made some pictures of this fountain a couple of weeks ago during the same time frame. My camera stopped the action very well, but I didn’t think that it made for an interesting photo. The Big Stopper allowed me to slow things down a bit. My step daughter was playing in the fountain at the time of this exposure, but thanks to the long exposure you don’t even see here. In fact while I was making this photo there were four kids running around. Since none of them stopped for any length of time they became invisible.
Technical Data
As I talked about above the first bit of technical data is that I used my Lee Big Stopper to make this image at midday. Even at f/22 and 100 ISO my camera wanted to make an exposure at 1/250th of a second because of the large amount of light on the scene. Converting that using the 10 stop formula gives you an exposure of eight seconds. When I ran the exposure for eight seconds it seemed fairly dark. I kept creeping up in time just seeing what the final result would be. I ended up using the full 30 seconds that is built into the camera. Had I anticipated shooting this long of an exposure I could have brought my release cable to try an even longer exposure in bulb mode. I like the look that it gives. The water and the clouds blur giving you a sense of the movement. I will have to try this a bit more on campus to see what it can do for me.
In post I used an HDR in Lightroom preset to start off. I then adjusted a few sliders to get things dialed in a bit more. The main slider adjusted was the temperature. Using the Big Stopper creates a situation where a lot of blue light makes it through. Your image really turns a bit blue. Since I shoot in RAW I can adjust that later. The big stopper really is made to make black and white images. This photo looks great in black and white, but I wanted to make a color image. I loved the blue sky, and I didn’t want to lose that. Over the next month or so I will have some great opportunities to test out the big stopper. I think that it really is a game changer. It also means that I will have to lug my tripod around a lot more than I do.
Photo Sale!
This image and all of my others on my website here are now 50% off until Labor Day. I thought that after the long winter that we endured a photo sale was in order. If you like the photo above just click on it, and you will be taken directly to the image on SmugMug. If you just want to browse my online portfolio you can click on the link below.
Dave Wegiel Photography 