Ripple

Ripple, Olympic Peninsula, Washington – Steve Rutherford Landscape Photography Art Gallery

Ripple, Olympic Peninsula, Washington – Steve Rutherford Landscape Photography Art Gallery

This is an unframed, limited edition collection landscape photography print of only 25 units. It is printed on Hahnemuhle Fine Art Pearl papers, structured to refract the highest values in colour and detail. It’s high-quality ink absorbing layer enables exceptional image quality with enormously detailed sharpness, and a very broad colour range, providing archival permanency of your artwork for over 100 years.

On tripod, Canon 5DMk2, 200mm, F14, 1/8 sec, ISO 100, no filter, processed in Lightroom.

I was sitting by a lake on my way through the Olympic peninsula, when this image struck me. Like a typical landscape photographer, I had my vision trained to wide angle only and wanted to include this reflection in a shot, then I realised the reflection was the shot! I focussed on finding a composition that reminded me of painted brush strokes. From a distance this image looks just like that, but when you really look you see the ripples created by the wind on the lake in the opposing direction.

Ripple, Olympic Peninsula, Washington – Steve Rutherford Landscape Photography Art Gallery

Using movement in your images doesn’t always have to revolve around long exposures. In this case, a short but direct exposure time allowed me to freeze the ripples and stop the reflection from blurring out too much. The vibrancy of colour is also affected by long exposure. Too long and your colours will wash out. Too short and they’ll be dull. Experiment with the light and colour and if needed go into your cameras menu and increase the saturation levels but never set tham as maximum saturation. Your result will look too false. Only use this when you need to capture the right amount of colour. Don’t fake it.