Ripple Effect

At Espoo city, Finland, 28 June 2001 around sunrise. Canon EOS D30, Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II (77mm equiv.), no filters. ISO 100, 1/125s f3.2. (No manipulation whatsoever, not cropped).

I was driving home along the expressway from Helsinki to Espoo when the sky caught my attention. After pulling over to admire it and leaving for the office to get the camera which I'd left behind (sigh), I was lucky to find the sky waiting for me when I got back. All the other shots I took are quite ordinary, but somehow I got this idea of aiming towards the dead calm sea and turning the image upside down...

The effect doesn't seem to work so well with a small image size. A bigger 1080x720 pixel (100 kB) image can be found here.

-- Janne Korkkula (jk@hut.fi), June 28, 2001

Answers

Cool effect, and nice colors. Would be neat to see with some more clouds, but this looks good as is.

-- Christian Deichert (torgophile@aol.com), July 01, 2001.

When it first came on my screen, I thought, "What the hell is wrong with your camera? - is that a photoshop effect?" I think that it would have been better to include either both sides of the mirror image, or at least some shore, so that the picture contains some clues as to what's going on. I have seen pictures like this that contain lilypads, etc. Most of the shots that I have seen reflecting off a pool are wide angle, too. Kudos for the unique thought, though.

-- David LaHeist (nikonos@bellsouth.net), July 15, 2001.

I agree that it works better in the large version. There you can see some of the ripples in the water, which subtly alert the viewer to what's going on. A bit more disturbance in the water would be even better, IMO.

-- Alan Davenport (w7apd@home.com), July 17, 2001.