This was a shot I have always wanted. I used to check on the weather conditions to see if I could find a time when the sun was setting, that there was a good chance of getting a sunset, and that some swells were passing through. I had a lot of failures before I got this one, and learnt what all the fuss was about with burst mode speeds. Since I was shooting landscapes before this it was never really an issue. and I thought my camera was fast enough. That was until I realised how many shots I was missing.
This is a very cool image Andre! Looking at the thumbnail I thought this was a macro shot of some sort of glass work. I bet this took hundreds of shots to get one this nice, with the tunnel opening on the far side near centered in the frame. The colors and lighting are excellent. The focus and detail on the water tunnel is outstanding, and I love that you have the horizon in a nice composition as well.
My only suggestion would be to try something like the Topaz tools to try and increase sharpness and reduce noise in the tunnel wall.
Andre, this is a really cool photo. I hope that the water was not cold at all, as I can imagine you being in the water for longer than you probably cared for. However, it paid off since you captured beautiful colors in a very eye-catching composition. I’m not sure that at an ISO of 640 there would be much noise, but it appears that way in the LLC. I’ll add to the suggestion above of using Topaz DenoiseAI. It can’t hurt to make this an even greater image. This is not a suggestion, but I wonder if you tried to open the shadows a little bit and compare both images. I like the dark tones here.
Andre, this is an awesome view through this wave tunnel, with all of the bright colors coming through and reflecting off the water. I do think that some dodging in the lower left to lighten the lighter parts there would be good. However, that needs to be carefully so you don’t turn the black areas gray or add noise. This is where a subtracted luminosity mask (assuming you use those…) would work, letting your dodging focus on the middle darks, but not the blacks.
