Water, ducks, flowers and a UFO

[Steve Foss]

Here are some from today. Was out on an excursion, so my focus was not on my own photography, but I did manage to capture a few. It was a gorgeous spring day to be in the woods.

This was shot with stacked 8 stop ND and 4 stop ND filters for a darkening effect of 12 full stops to achieve the 8-second exposure needed for the cottony water. Also at iso50 and f22 with the Canon 17-40.

[finnbay]

Hey, good to see someone in this neck of the woods gets a chance to get out! Nice series - really like the ferns poppin' out at me!

[no bait nate]

the first one is crazy awesome. nicely done

[Deitz Dittrich]

Dude, I dont know why.. But shot #3 speaks to me.. the fern shot is like no other I have ever seen. I love ferns to begin with.. but Wow.. killer.

[dockothebay]

So nice to see some of your work again! The ferns are really special, Thanks for sharing.

[Hwood]

I have been looking at ND filters, now I know I want one. Got a graduated the other day but yet to try it out. I can already tell its not dark enough for the shot I have layed out in my head.

[Steve Foss]

Thanks so much, everyone.

DD, the shaft of the fern went straight out the back. I call it "The Batfern," as in . . . "Holy UFO suspension, Batman!"

These last six months have been a wild ride for a lot of reasons. While I've been busy with a ton of non photography things, I've also been shooting for clients (some, uh, candid photographs) all along, just not the types of things to post on a family site. Nuff said about that.

The ND (neutral density) filters are key when attempting fuzzy water images during daylight hours. You still can't get it done on a sunny day, but there were heavy clouds when I captured the first image. With no filters, a person can easily get those long, long exposures by doing the fuzzy water stuff before sunrise or after sunset, when there's still enough ambient light to see around you, but not enough light to ruin the effort. Today's was just an experiment to see what 12 stops of ND could do at midday under a light overcast sky.

[ShawnZ]

Super use of depth of field on the first three images. The emergent fern is very cool and reminds me of other such great fauna images of yours that have been posted on this site.

A great addition to your portfolio.

[eyeguy 54]

Dandys!!

[wishing for walleyes]

I really like the waterfall picture.The colors of the water are very cool.The fern is awesome as well.All very nice pictures.

[JayinMN]

The waterfall shot is excellent.

[Yellowhead]

Words fail, I'm just blown away by the fern!

[Birdsong]

Love Shawn's description--'emergent fern'--was wondering how to describe it. Great photo.