The Photo

This is another photo taken during my trip to the Amazon. Taken from the same location as [link] but on the following day.

It often rained heavily during the night, and just before dawn, as the temperate rose, the water would start to evaporate, creating this beautiful mist above the river.

As the dawn progressed the mist would reveal and then hide the far bank, isolating lone trees that projected through the surface of the water.
The sky would change colours, and eventually the sun would appear, burning away the mist in a matter of seconds...

I'm never sure about submitting shots like this here, as it doesn't have any drama or impact, but it's a shot that I like a lot, so hopefully a few other people will enjoy it too.

Technique

This was a relatively easy shot to meter for as there's very little contrast range in the image. There's no need to filter highlights or worry about losing shadow detail as all of the image is within a couple of stops range of brightness.

I used the cameras matrix meter to give me an exposure reading, and then reduced the exposure by one stop, as the Nikon D80 has a tendency to overexpose a little, and I didn't want to risk burning highlights across the top. The sun was about to come over the horizon, and it was getting brighter there.

In terms of composition, more and more nowadays I find myself using a telephoto lens instead of a wide angle, to try and isolate elements in the landscape, trying to create more simple abstract images.

With this shot, the mist was concealing the far bank, which gave me a great screen against which I could isolate the lone tree in the water. Without the mist, the tree would have blended in with the far bank, and there would have been no shot.
I wanted something to balance against the tree though, and luckily the mist was rising just enough to the right of the tree to reveal the far bank there.

I needed to use a tripod for this shot as it was taken at 100mm, in relatively low light levels, requiring a shutter speed of 1/8. At that focal length, anything below 1/100s would have been liable to camera shake.

Post Processing

This image is pretty much exactly as it came out of the camera on a RAW file. In Aperture I've cropped the top and left a little, as there was too much redundant space there.
Then I tweaked contrast a tiny amount, and increased the colour temperature by around 500k.

Finally the image was resized and sharpened, before I added a title in PS

Metadata

Taken on Rio Juma, The Amazon, Brazil
Nikon D80 | Nikkor 18-200mm VR | Nikon Cable release
Manfrotto 190XProB w/ 322RC2 ballhead
1/8 | f16 | 105mm

Workflow in Apple Aperture. Title in PS