Otto Berkeley
Legacy
With February's snow and subzero temperatures now a fading memory, milder conditions across the UK over the past week brought that rare and wonderful combination of low wind speeds and slack tides. I was out at blue hour on several mornings to capture the scene near the Queen's Walk, where the flow of the Thames came to a standstill and created near-perfect reflections of the HMS Belfast, the riverside promenade and Tower Bridge in the distance.
This image was a combination of nine bracketed exposures, blended with luminosity masks in Photoshop and with Nik plugins to adjust the contrast and detail. The main challenge when shooting was whether to trade clarity in the water for clarity in the highlights, because extending the shutter speed and ensuring a smoother reflection also increased the size of the starbursts inside the riverside lamps, which had the potential to become a distraction. By increasing the ISO and narrowing the aperture I struck a reasonable balance, and I was then able to apply my darker exposures to the highlights to restore detail in the lamps. After this, I targeted my brighter exposures to the midtones and applied a radial gradient mask to the underside of the Belfast in order to bring out some of its metallic detail, as well as to emphasise the boat's prominence so that viewers' eyes would hopefully be guided to this part of the image first.
The colour-grading phase was a mixture of Colour Balance, Selective Colour and Gradient Map adjustments to create a colder finish and to convey the blue-hour ambience. Setting Nik's Silver Efex Pro to Luminosity and increasing the Soft Contrast and Amplify Whites sliders, I made the light inside the bridge and along the boat's upper deck slightly more dynamic. Finally, inside Colour Efex Pro, I used a sparing amount of the Glamour Glow filter in order to soften the shadows.
This last adjustment was important to me as I felt that a sense of dreaminess, particularly in the reflection, was key to conveying the sense of peace and tranquillity along the Thames that morning. Despite the imposing presence of a World War II-era cruiser in the foreground, the peaceful mood along the river at the quietest time of day was made all the more impactful by the calm conditions, creating a scene that doesn't come along all that often.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.
Legacy
With February's snow and subzero temperatures now a fading memory, milder conditions across the UK over the past week brought that rare and wonderful combination of low wind speeds and slack tides. I was out at blue hour on several mornings to capture the scene near the Queen's Walk, where the flow of the Thames came to a standstill and created near-perfect reflections of the HMS Belfast, the riverside promenade and Tower Bridge in the distance.
This image was a combination of nine bracketed exposures, blended with luminosity masks in Photoshop and with Nik plugins to adjust the contrast and detail. The main challenge when shooting was whether to trade clarity in the water for clarity in the highlights, because extending the shutter speed and ensuring a smoother reflection also increased the size of the starbursts inside the riverside lamps, which had the potential to become a distraction. By increasing the ISO and narrowing the aperture I struck a reasonable balance, and I was then able to apply my darker exposures to the highlights to restore detail in the lamps. After this, I targeted my brighter exposures to the midtones and applied a radial gradient mask to the underside of the Belfast in order to bring out some of its metallic detail, as well as to emphasise the boat's prominence so that viewers' eyes would hopefully be guided to this part of the image first.
The colour-grading phase was a mixture of Colour Balance, Selective Colour and Gradient Map adjustments to create a colder finish and to convey the blue-hour ambience. Setting Nik's Silver Efex Pro to Luminosity and increasing the Soft Contrast and Amplify Whites sliders, I made the light inside the bridge and along the boat's upper deck slightly more dynamic. Finally, inside Colour Efex Pro, I used a sparing amount of the Glamour Glow filter in order to soften the shadows.
This last adjustment was important to me as I felt that a sense of dreaminess, particularly in the reflection, was key to conveying the sense of peace and tranquillity along the Thames that morning. Despite the imposing presence of a World War II-era cruiser in the foreground, the peaceful mood along the river at the quietest time of day was made all the more impactful by the calm conditions, creating a scene that doesn't come along all that often.
You can also connect with me on Instagram, Facebook, 500px and Google+.