First of all, let's look at some numbers:

The Amazon River is the largest river in the world by volume, with a total river flow greater than the next top TEN largest rivers flowing into the ocean combined.

It is responsible for a fifth of the total volume of fresh water entering the oceans worldwide.

The quantity of fresh water released by the Amazon into the Atlantic Ocean is incredble: up to 300,000 m³ per second in the rainy season and it's drainage basin covers an area of around 40 percent of South America.

More than one third of all species in the world live in the Amazon Rainforest.

Between 1991 and 2000, the total area of forest lost in the Amazon rose from 415,000 to 587,000 km², an area twice the size of Portugal.

In February, 2008, the Brazilian government announced that the rate at which the Amazon rainforest is being cut down has increased significantly over the past few months. During the last five months of 2007, more than 3,200 sq. kilometers - an area equivalent to the size of the state of Rhode Island - was deforested.

At the current rate, in 20 years the Amazon Rainforest will be reduced by 40%

If you want to know more about protection of the Amazon, have a look here [link]

The Photo

Although I've submitted quite a few images from my trip to the Amazon, I've yet to submit a photo that gave a really clear idea of what the rainforest actually looks like.

This image was taken a few minutes before sunset, which we had gone out onto a lake to watch. Although the sunset was incredible, it was very difficult to make a decent shot of it from the boat as there was no foreground other than the reflection in the water. The backlit sky turned all of the bank into silhouettes, which resulted in big chunks of lost shadow detail so I just took a few shots of the actual sunset, which I've uploaded to scraps here [link]

Instead I focused on looking in the other direction, where the suns last rays where painting the trees and bank in gorgeous light, saturating the colours and giving everything a beautiful texture.

Like all the shots I've submitted from the Amazon, this one should be accompanied by the incredible noises of the jungle we could hear while this image was being made. From monkeys to frogs, herons to cicadas, river dolphins blowing air and caimen slithering into the water...a cacophony of every creature trying to make itself heard as night fell.

Technique

There's little to say about the technique in this image really. As I was in a small boat, I couldn't use a tripod and my main focus was on making sure shutter speeds didn't get low enough for shake to be a problem.
I took an exposure reading from the reflection in the water at f8, which indicated a shutter speed of 1/15. My camera's matrix meter tends to overexpose a little, and as I wanted the colours to be nicely saturated, whilst not being overly concerned with losing detail in the shadows, I increased the shutter speed by a stop to 1/30.

I learned whilst I was in the Amazon that the sky reflected in the water is invariably two stops darker than the sky itself, so I just used a 2 stop ND soft graduated filter (with the graduation across the tree line) to balance the sky and it's reflection.

In terms of composition, I put the reflection across the centre, as there was no foreground so I wanted to create a symmetrical image, and I lined the trees closest to me up with the centre of the frame, leaving the parts of the banks that were in shadow to the edges.

Post Processing

Very little has been done to the image really, other than cropping into a square to increase the symmetry.
Shot in RAW, I've given minor adjustments to contrast, saturation and vibrancy in Aperture.
The image has also had some subtle sharpening and finally a frame and title in PS.

Metadata

Taken on the Rio Juma, Amazon, Brazil
Nikon D80 | Nikkor 18-200mm VR
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) soft GND
1/15 seconds | f8 | 18mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture and PS.

Comments

Just a word on comments. As I said in my last journal, I can no longer give the time to replying to every comment and fave.
I really would like to, but it's simply impossible.

So thanks in advance for any comment or fave, I really appreciate it

Take care

Andy