Blood Sunset

by Ray Mathis

Title

Blood Sunset

Artist

Ray Mathis

Medium

Photograph - 4x5

Description

People often assume this photo was "photoshopped" in some way. It's actually a 45 second exposure, which I added 8 seconds to before I closed the shutter on my 4x5 field camera. I did that because the light seemed to be waning. The only "manipulation", if you want to call it that, is using a Cokin graduated gray filters, G1 (1 stop) and G2 (2 stops), which means a total of 3 stops, because the top of a scene like this usually meters 3 stops brighter than the reflection of the same spot in the water in the foreground. But using those filters is just a way to compensate for the limited light range of the film. I've been told color transparency film has a range of 5 EV's, while our eyes have a range of something like 130 EV's. Without these "sunglass" filters on the top portion of this scene, everything in the foreground would be nearly black. (Even though the white ice and snow would help some) The clouds were moving, and the water was actually NOT totally calm. The moving clouds and a slight overexposure created the vivid colors, not photoshop. I actually packed up my camera, thinking it was going to fizzle out as a sunset, and had started back to the car, but stopped myself and reminded myself of other times when I left, and regretted it. So I came back and set up and waited. And low and behold, this is what I got. Actually, it lasted long enough for me to get 3 shots off of equal length. This was the best of the three. Winter sunset on Nippersink Creek in Glacial Park, which was recently dedicated as Hack-ma-tack National Wildlife Refuge. Glacial Park is located in McHenry County and part of the McHenry County Conservation District lands in Illinois. This was a 45 second exposure.

Uploaded

December 12th, 2012

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