The Photo

This is a different version of a shot I submitted earlier this year taken on my trip to the Amazon rainforest last December.
I got up every day at around 4am to shoot the sunrise (which is ridiculously earlier at that latitude). On the first two days, the rain that we’d had at night evaporated off the river as the first light of dawn started to shine through the trees, obscuring the far bank in a thin layer of mist.
The conditions were beautiful for photography, although the number of compositions were limited due to the fact that I was staying on a small island, and this was the only floating pier there. It’s not advisable to shoot from the actual river bank at this time of day due to the fact that there are hundreds of sleeping caiman (a kind of alligator) who don’t take kindly to being stepped upon.
I did swim in the water here though, and it did have plenty of piranhas in it. Piranhas are only really dangerous in the dry season when they are trapped in closed lagoons and there’s no food left in the water, but in the wet season when the water level is high (as it was when I visited) there’s plenty of food and they don’t go near people.
I realized I had to go in the water when I saw the local kids playing there…..I didn’t stay in long though

Technique

With this shot I played around with focal lengths, shooting with a telephoto to compose the tree more intimately (as in the previous shot I submitted from this morning) and slightly shorter lengths to fit more of the opposite bank in. This shot needed a soft 2 stop neutral density filter pulled down to the line of the water to make the reflection have a similar brightness value to the rest of the shot.
I used a cable release and a tripod to keep the camera as still as possible.

Post Processing

Obviously the image has been cropped as there was no real interest in the top part of the sky or it’s reflection, and I increased the mid tone contrast to bring out a little more detail in the trees on the far bank.
Then resizing and sharpening for the web.

Metadata

Taken on Rio Juma, The Amazon, Brazil
Nikon D80 | Nikkor 18-200mm VR | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
Lee 0.6 (2 stop) soft GND
1/20 | f11 | 60mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture. Frame and title in PS