Burst of Warmth

dseidman

The Seattle area experienced some interesting weather for the first day of summer. There were really cool clouds overhead all day but I couldn't think of a good place to go. I eventually settled on Golden Gardens but my best shot of the day doesn't show the aforementioned clouds.

Canon 5D Mark II
Canon 17-40L






I decided to try out a wider crop in order to remove some of the uninteresting top region of the image. I'd love to get some feedback on which one you prefer.

thapamd

Magnificent shot, Danny! What a beautiful composition, with great FG textures and magical light.

UmmmHowsThat

Excellent shot! I really enjoy that the horizon does not equally split the shot. And trees in the sand, now that's cool!

dseidman

thapamd wrote:

Magnificent shot, Danny! What a beautiful composition, with great FG textures and magical light.

Thanks! It was my first time attempting the sun star effect so I'm pretty happy that this turned out okay.

dseidman

UmmmHowsThat wrote:

Excellent shot! I really enjoy that the horizon does not equally split the shot. And trees in the sand, now that's cool!

Thank you. I'm considering a crop to bring the horizon up even higher. I feel the top part of the frame doesn't really add much to the image.

I'd like to get some feeback on what you guys prefer!

thapamd

I prefer the original, uncropped version.

squirl033

love the texture of the sand in the foreground, and the sun through the trees... this would even work well as a vertical crop, IMHO... take the middle third vertically. with 21Mp to work with, you could keep just that portion and still have a darn nice image!

dseidman

thapamd wrote:

I prefer the original, uncropped version.

I appreciate you returning to give even more feedback!
I gave it some more thought and now agree with you. There was something that was still bothering me about the picture but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I went back and re-edited it and have now put up the new version. The light is now slightly diffused with some richer colors.

dseidman

squirl033 wrote:

love the texture of the sand in the foreground, and the sun through the trees... this would even work well as a vertical crop, IMHO... take the middle third vertically. with 21Mp to work with, you could keep just that portion and still have a darn nice image!

Thanks for your comment! There's no need to crop because luckily I thought this through while taking the photo.
I probably took about 150 shots of this scene, including several verticals but I think I like this one the most out of all of them.

Awais Yaqub

Fantastic work Danny as usual i really like the 2nd version !

thapamd

Nice job with the colors, Danny. I'm looking at the image again, and I think the picture looks a little rotated (CCW). It may just be an optical illusion because of the apparent horizon, but appearances are what count in pictures

Benjer

Beautiful shot with a great quality of light and good choice of exposure. I like both versions - I don't find the upper portion of the first to be distracting. The 2nd crop is perhaps more potent visually without the tree tops, but for some reason it appears to lack some of the warmth in the first. Did you lighten it up or reduce saturation at all?

dseidman

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Fantastic work Danny as usual i really like the 2nd version !

Thank you very much!

dseidman

thapamd wrote:

Nice job with the colors, Danny. I'm looking at the image again, and I think the picture looks a little rotated (CCW). It may just be an optical illusion because of the apparent horizon, but appearances are what count in pictures

I did a little CCW rotation in post processing because the horizon looked a little slanted. Since I couldn't actually see a horizon line from this vantage and I don't have a bubble level, the rotation was a bit of a judgement call. Maybe I went a little too far. Man, this was a tough shot to process.

dseidman

Benjer wrote:

Beautiful shot with a great quality of light and good choice of exposure. I like both versions - I don't find the upper portion of the first to be distracting. The 2nd crop is perhaps more potent visually without the tree tops, but for some reason it appears to lack some of the warmth in the first. Did you lighten it up or reduce saturation at all?

Sorry for the confusion. I didn't really do enough to clarify for those who didn't see the original post. The first image I put up had the same crop as #1 but the colors and contrast matched what you see in #2. I went back last night and did a re-edit to bring up the colors and create a more diffused look in the light. So the top image you are seeing has since been edited a second time and updated. It seems that most people aren't liking the cropped version so I should probably just take it down.
I hope this cleared things up a bit.