Winter colors on the boat dock

aporia

Looking for two dominant colors, I see mostly muted gray sky and beach or dingy white snow out at the Port these days. But then I discovered the winter boat dock rust scrobbing:oogle through the fading blue.

[Wind blown and camera shaking ==> first pic removed]


Another direction (with Lab intensified colors):



A different crop:



Anything two-color challenge worthy here? :scratch

~~~~~
Edit: How do I access the source code to change the size on these without having to copy all the URLs again?

gluwater

I like the third shot the best. It looks better framed with the little bit of sky cropped off the left side. The first shot looks blurred to me, maybe camera shake? I also like the more vibrant colors of teh third shot.

aporia

Thanks for the comments, Nick.

Yep, the focus is off on the first one in the series. I took this at the end of the shoot with fading light just before a long walk back to the car. Perhaps I started back a second or so too early. I do like the top of the chain showing in this pic though, so I think I'll go back and try it again.

Tessa HD

I like your idea Very much!
first one is too blurry tho, and the last one seems a little too grainy & saturated, but that might not be a bad thing - it does look neat. yeah, I'm wishy washy.

aporia

Tessa HD wrote:

first one is too blurry tho, and the last one seems a little too grainy & saturated, but that might not be a bad thing - it does look neat. yeah, I'm wishy washy.

Thanks, Tessa. I like the idea too, but the more I look at them, the more I see OOF on all of them. Ack, I'm trying out the Canon 300mm F/4 lens for the first time with somewhat tricky focus issues. Time for a reshoot.

Any ideas on the framing of this shot? Does one direction work better than the other? Does it work as a two-color shot?

C&C appreciated. :cool

Tessa HD

my preference,
is the composition in #2. best wishes retaking - I really think you've got a great photo in the works!
tessa

ReWrite

Are you cropping these down significantly, shooting very high ISO or having to boost exposure significantly in PP? I'm just surprised at what looks like a rather large amount of noise in all of these. Perhaps the color is a bit over-enhanced.

Also, the composition doesn't do much for me.

aporia

Conditions here over the last few days have been very gray, dark and overcast. Ian, the noise you see is probably from my Lab-enhanced color work in PP and, no doubt, could be handled better (with a layer of noise reduction or gaussian blur). ISO may be too high also as I was using a long F/4 lens in fading light.

I find looking for creative composition in the context of a two color limitation to be quite the head-scratching challenge. But hey, most of my pictures suck anyway, so I'm happy finally to be sharing the process here in the hopes of reducing the suckage.

Too much wind and snow today to do a reshoot at the Port. I'm going to try a smaller lens and look for some different angles. Maybe tomorrow.

Thanks for the C&C.

saurora

Rusty, grainy and gritty can be good!
I like the colors in this subject. Normally, I'm not a big fan of noisy, grainy photos. But, hey! Sometimes it works to your advantage, right? The first photo you already know is too blurry. In looking at the 2nd and 3rd I leaned towards the 2nd. But I have to admit that the noise and more vivid color seems to really go with the rusty, corroded metal! So the 3rd is a contender. I definitely would do a retake if you ever get a chance. Good eye for color.

aporia

Thanks for the comments, saurora, and welcome to DGrin! I'm originally from the other end of California (more Bay Area mellow than orange ).

I went out to the Marina again today to shoot but it was so brutally cold and windy that I couldn't keep my eyes from watering long enough even to think about taking any photos. My face was so cold that it took a couple of hours after coming home for the color to return to normal. Perhaps I should have done a two-color self-portrait of flesh freezing in the wind!

If the arctic wind cooperates, I'm going to try a few different angles and focal lengths again tomorrow.