what happened here?

[landon9720]

Any idea why this photo came out so washed out? The sun filtering in through the trees? There wasn't a lot of water mist in the air. My wife caught a whole series of photos like this. The camera was in auto.

BTW thanks for the shout out in the podcast. There's a good community feel going on here. I've found the podcast hugely helpful in my quest to take better pictures.

[tirediron]

Shooting too close to the sun is my guess; what kind camera/lens?

[landon9720]

Nikon D40 with the kit 18-55mm. Would a hood have helped?

[Natanis]

Looks to me like the photo was over exposed.

[Marko]

Looks like it might be flare. A lens hood would have definitely helped. I have a lens that does something similar when the sun hits it at a certain angle.

[tirediron]

Nikon D40 with the kit 18-55mm. Would a hood have helped?

If you look at the image, you'll see lots of deep shadow area, indicating that there's another culprit responsible for the haze. Agree a lens hood would have likely helped a great deal.

[Travis]

lens flare....arghh....

If you are short a lens hood you can often defeat this effect using your free hand.... just make your hand like how the queen waves and put it a few inches from the lens in the direction of the sun... you can see the effect through the viewfinder...

[Marko]

lens flare....arghh....

If you are short a lens hood you can often defeat this effect using your free hand.... just make your hand like how the queen waves and put it a few inches from the lens in the direction of the sun... you can see the effect through the viewfinder...

Excellent point Travis - i forgot to write that. That's exactly what i do with the lens I am talking about.

[pslove]

i know you said there wasn't alot of water flying around..but you seem pretty close to alot of splashing water. do you think it might have been a temporarily foggy lense? the effect reminds me of what kept on happening to my lense at the vancouver aquarium. it might just be me, but i think i can see little water droplets on your photo.

[mindforge]

This can be fixed easily in photoshop by dodging and burning, saturation changes and some contrast editing.

Lens flare from not having a hood was probably the culprit.

Just make a curves adjustment layer and pull in from the right to increase the blacks, probably about 20% to the center with your dark side. Then go the red channel and move it in about 10% to the center with your dark side.

I would say this is probably lens flare due to the fact that it is pretty clear down away from the light after the adjustment. You know, it could be fog though. Was it cold in the morning before this was taken?

This would have looked better, sorry it was just a quick copy/paste of the image not a download.