LPS10: it was foggy at the beach today.

LiquidAir · July 29, 2007

So foggy the lens kept misting and spoiling a lot of shots. This was the best of the day:

For my lastest revision, I am leaning toward a pano crop:

This is the first version of the image I posted:

Thoughts? I may not be able to get to the coast again during the contest window, but I will look at other possibilties. I don't have a name for it yet.

m_granite · July 29, 2007

That's such a lovely effect from the sky to the water .

Dee · July 29, 2007

I'm amazed
you got any color. Our beach was totally gray, gray, gray, gray.... if this fog continues, I'm going to have to haul out the tripod and try for some slow shutter speed shots if I can get any crashing waves. We had some today.

Travis · July 29, 2007

highlights
Stunning scene. I'd like to see some more highlights on the rocks in the foreground. It doesn't need much - just enough to bring out some detail.

Tentacion · July 29, 2007

Beautiful shot, love how you captured the rocks in a diagonal line...but it feels too smooth to me, if you understand that...Too slick, like not enough texture....maybe dodgin a touch of highlights into the rocks would give it that sense of roughness....

BUT it is BEAUTIFUL and I DO like it !!

HoofClix · July 29, 2007

I don't know how I'd beat this one for what you did there.

Are you sure the judges will see the "surf?" :uhoh

Felicia · July 29, 2007

Dang!

seastack · July 30, 2007

Nice! Definitely a contender but ....

The rock dead center bothers me. I suspect you may be wedded to keeping the fogged over coastline on the right in this image - I would be if it was mine - but you might consider playing around with different crops. Maybe take a little off the right and the top to move both the horizon and the rock a little more off center. The colors are great and the simplicity intriguing. I don't think you need the coastline on the right for this image to work, perhaps it even detracts from the simplicity of elements and graduation of color ... or maybe if you left just the point in the distance.

And I agree, bring just a bit more shadow detail out of the rocks if possible. That's my two cents for what it's worth.

LiquidAir · July 30, 2007

Thanks all for your comments. The orginal was pretty low contrast and on the first pass I went after it with a sledge hammer of a steep curve. Last night I reprocessed it from the RAW with a bit more delicate hand to maintain detail in the rocks. I also was a bit more careful about color which has gotten rid of some of the magenta cast in the foreground.

LiquidAir · July 30, 2007

Dee wrote:

you got any color. Our beach was totally gray, gray, gray, gray.... if this fog continues, I'm going to have to haul out the tripod and try for some slow shutter speed shots if I can get any crashing waves. We had some today.

When I was headed down to the beach, there was a guided photography class headed out. They told me they were giving up on the day because of the fog. I saw that band of light clouds on the horizion and stuck it out hoping it would hold and pick up some color as the sun went down. The fog kept getting thicker but I got lucky and the horizion held out long enough to catch it at peak color.

LiquidAir · July 30, 2007

Travis wrote:

Stunning scene. I'd like to see some more highlights on the rocks in the foreground. It doesn't need much - just enough to bring out some detail.

Thanks. I actually captured quite a bit of detail in the rocks but cruched it pretty hard in my first pass processing.

LiquidAir · July 30, 2007

Tentacion wrote:

Beautiful shot, love how you captured the rocks in a diagonal line...but it feels too smooth to me, if you understand that...Too slick, like not enough texture....maybe dodgin a touch of highlights into the rocks would give it that sense of roughness....

BUT it is BEAUTIFUL and I DO like it !!

Thanks! I have only had my ND filters for a week or so and they were buning a hole in the bottom of my camera bag. A foggy day at the beach seemed like just the right time to pull them out. I had no real idea what to expect from a 20 second exposure, but I think you are right that something has to be sharp to ground the picture.

Tentacion · July 30, 2007

Whooooo nice nice...I like the sharpness in the rocks now, and for some reason, you can actually see the foggy mist like almost floating on the water, did you do something to it?

It was beautiful before and I like your enhancements...

LiquidAir · July 30, 2007

seastack wrote:

Nice! Definitely a contender but ....

The rock dead center bothers me. I suspect you may be wedded to keeping the fogged over coastline on the right in this image - I would be if it was mine - but you might consider playing around with different crops. Maybe take a little off the right and the top to move both the horizon and the rock a little more off center. The colors are great and the simplicity intriguing. I don't think you need the coastline on the right for this image to work, perhaps it even detracts from the simplicity of elements and graduation of color ... or maybe if you left just the point in the distance.

And I agree, bring just a bit more shadow detail out of the rocks if possible. That's my two cents for what it's worth.

I did really want to capture that fog when shooting and what I wanted to do was shoot from further to left to bring the background and foreground closer together. However, the water out there can be dangerous and the tide was coming in so I was pretty cautious about how far out I was willing to stand while shooting. I have already cropped some of the cliffs on the right, but I can see your point about going futher. Maybe I'll end up back at a 3:2 crop when I am done. You're suggestion has put an idea in my head that I am going to try out... Thanks.

LiquidAir · July 30, 2007

Tentacion wrote:

Whooooo nice nice...I like the sharpness in the rocks now, and for some reason, you can actually see the foggy mist like almost floating on the water, did you do something to it?

It was beautiful before and I like your enhancements...

The mist is actually a motion blurred wave coming by. I was in water up to my ankles for a bit during the exposure and the tripod got just a tad wet. It is actually a miracle that the camera stayed still enough when I was hit by the wave that anything is sharp.

In the first version the misty water around the rocks got squished by my overly agressive curves. This time around I did my RAW conversion to preserve detail in the rocks. Then in Photoshop I built a mask to protect the rocks as I applied curves to the rest of the scene. The bottom of the mask for the rocks is a gradient designed to blend the rock into the water smoothy and protect the misty look of the water around its base.

Travis · July 30, 2007

The detail has it
The new version looks great!

LiquidAir · July 31, 2007

Ok, playing with crops: here is the full width of the original capture (and everything 24mm would give me) in a 10:4 pano. Essentially this crop is what I had in my mind when I was shooting, but when I first looked at it at home, it felt a little off balance. However, it is growing on me.

Another possibility is to chop off a bit more from the right and go 16:9:

HoofClix · July 31, 2007

Contrary to all the advice, I like your wider image, the one on top. It provides to me a sense of context I suppose.

Tentacion · July 31, 2007

Oooo I like the top image (wide image 10:4))....I like seeing the shore line also, it adds dimension to me, I personally like the cliff on the side and how the curve of it brings my eye in, the curve of the shore brings me in to the rocks and then my eye flows out with the diagonal line of the rocks.

The one thing that I did notice was the "dark" triangular corner on the bottom left...

But that is just me, who knows what anyone else might see...

Antonio Correia · July 31, 2007

Kenneth. Hard work for me to make a constructive critice about your picture.:D

Why ? Because everybody has posted their own opinions and there is little to say.

However, before dinner I made the crop herewith 3/2, my most usual size and I erased the rock on the left.

But now, 2 or 3 hours late, I like best the 1.st picture, the wider one.
It gives indeed a great feeling of freedom and enlarges the horizons.

I am not going to say anything about the treatment of the photo, which is much better than the 1.st version (the smaller picture).

May be the little mountain on the right should be treated to appear not so strongly. As distance increase colors fade and so could you do to that piece of land.

Indeed there is a black triangle at the bottom left, which is a minor thing to correct if you think that is important.

That's it !

Antonio Correia · July 31, 2007

No way Kenneth.
No way. Your crop is 1234567 times better than mine.

LiquidAir · August 1, 2007

Antonio Correia wrote:

No way Kenneth.
No way. Your crop is 1234567 times better than mine.

I had an advantage over you... I had access to the orginal capture; some of the detail on the right got cropped out on the first pass and I un-cropped it. I have taken to doing all my Photoshop work on the whole image and cropping at the last moment in Lightroom. It can make the Photoshop work a bit tricky but it lets me change my mind about the crop very easily.

Oh, and call me Ken. Kenneth is the name I use for contracts; Ken is for friends

LiquidAir · August 1, 2007

Tentacion wrote:

Oooo I like the top image (wide image 10:4))....I like seeing the shore line also, it adds dimension to me, I personally like the cliff on the side and how the curve of it brings my eye in, the curve of the shore brings me in to the rocks and then my eye flows out with the diagonal line of the rocks.

The one thing that I did notice was the "dark" triangular corner on the bottom left...

But that is just me, who knows what anyone else might see...

You are right; there is a lot or story on the right hand edge. Looking at it now, I can't believe I cropped it off. I do remember thinking it was important when I framed the shot.

As for that triangle, it is oddly dark down there. I wonder is that is my steep curves exaggerating the vignetting of the lens? Anyhow, it wasn't too hard to dodge it out.

LiquidAir · August 1, 2007

Antonio Correia wrote:

May be the little mountain on the right should be treated to appear not so strongly. As distance increase colors fade and so could you do to that piece of land.

When I was dodging out the dark triangle I also did a couple passes over the clifside. There is a surprising amout of detail in it for the distance on a foggy day.

LiquidAir · August 1, 2007

Thank you everone for kind comments, observations, and suggestions. All your help has quite dramatically improved my entry. Here is what I am calling the final version:

Antonio Correia · August 1, 2007

Ken !
Good morning.

Justiceiro · August 1, 2007

If this was a poker game, I would be folding right about now. That shot is awesome.

BistiArt · August 2, 2007

Deep Imagination

LiquidAir wrote:

I will rarely repeat images, but this one has many gorgeous qualities.
When my eye enters the photo it picks up the subtle foreground rivulets, jumps to the sharp rocks, then seems to get lost in the filmy sea, but for it hauls up against the distant third rock on the right under the cloudy sky.
I love the contrast between sharp rocks and the filmy sea. I like the way the eye can play to the distant third rock on the right under the cloudy sky.

Like you, there are times when I have a gorgeous image, but the title has yet to come forth.
Re: Shay's post about titles, and the complement I recently got about emotive titles, I think such titles come from a deep spiritual source. I also think that's why they capture people's deeper imagination!

Good luck with your title...