The Avon (Again...)

Firstly thanks to all who viewed, commented and gave stars to my An Ode To Ansel Blip yesterday, giving my highest score yet, just overtaking my recent rainbow with birds entry.

(Most) Probably my last such river shot for a bit, this was taken at dusk, same lens - Nikkor D 17-35mm f2.8 - as yesterday's and day before - and as it was at early dusk, on the 'Frotto tripod, as it was a fairly long exposure.

The colour was a rather nice blue, the sun having set behind me and no longer radiating out any reddishness over this part. There's also a couple of black swans nesting in that big bush of undergrowth on the left - get in 'large' and you might see them. They were always some distance from me, with rather a lot of fast moving water between us, so I left them well alone (as one should, of course).

I was going to leave it in colour - and blue but it just looked flat. Injecting any contrast upset those colours, turning them cyan and greenish in parts and tending to burn out in others. This was not about shadow detail, extraction of those lead to the PSD template with which I turned it to b&w.

I wanted to make it flat - and wide - to accentuate the big flow of a big river. Hence the cropping. I cut out cloud detail at the top which I initially thought vital and similarly at the base, with grasses. I spent some time deciding and burning-in and dodging to build up the different areas of the image.

I then ran a warm-up and sepia Photo filter to give the final tone. I decided that this gave it something a bit extra without going too far.

17mm on full-frame D700 is 12mm in DX terms.