In the Field

High Tide in Mussel Inlet. Mussel Inlet (Great Bear Rainforest), BC, Canada. September 11, 2005.

Mussel Inlet in BC's Great Bear Rainforest is a great place to photograph coastal Brown Bears (aka Grizzly Bears). And, after a successful day of photographing bears it's easy to feel satisfied and content with yourself. Which is exactly what I was doing when we were traveling back from the estuary in an inflatable Zodiac to our overnight accommodation in a sailboat. Then, something in my head kicked in and told me to look around at the scene that was unfolding before me! There was an AMAZING reflection, exceptionally bright highlights, a darker-than-black shadow, and stunning colour. And I almost missed it - duhhh!

This is another situation where I was glad I was shooting digitally. The exposure was tricky and I knew it would be really easy to blow out the highlight detail in the clouds, so I thought "...make sure to underexpose the image" (relative to the recommended exposure of my camera's light meter). My first shot was at -1.0 stops, and, when I reviewed the image and the histogram it was clear I still lost the highlight details. I then backed off the exposure even more (to -1.67 stops) before I got the exposure I could work with. If I had been shooting film I wouldn't have had time (I had considerably less than a minute to capture the scene) to take sufficient light readings to accurately estimate the exposure.

Behind the Camera

High Tide in Mussel Inlet. Mussel Inlet (Great Bear Rainforest), BC, Canada. September 11, 2005.

Digital Capture; Compressed RAW (NEF) format; ISO 100.

Nikon D2X with Nikon 17-55 mm f/2.8G ED-IF AF-S DX lens @ 17 mm (25 mm equivalent with digital conversion factor) - handheld.

1/80s @ f5.6; -1.67 stop compensation from matrix-metered exposure setting.

At the Computer

High Tide in Mussel Inlet. Mussel Inlet (Great Bear Rainforest), BC, Canada. September 11, 2005.

RAW Conversion to 16-bit TIFF, including first-pass sharpening, exposure compensation, and tone curve adjustment, using Phase One's C1 Pro. Multiple RAW conversions (2 at different exposure settings) to extend dynamic range of captured image, in this case primarily to restore highlight detail in the clouds in the sky and those reflected in the water.

All further digital correction on 16-bit TIFF file using Adobe's Photoshop CS2, including compositing and masking of various exposure versions, selective saturation enhancement and selective sharpening for web output.

Conservation

High Tide in Mussel Inlet. Mussel Inlet (Great Bear Rainforest), BC, Canada. September 11, 2005.

Information to follow.