Left the house by 5:15 AM to get to the Giant Stairs in Harpswell, Maine by daybreak. No dramatic sunrise this day, but I was happy to find these wild yellow flowers growing out of the rocky ledge, which framed the view out to sea so beautifully. The only sounds were of crashing waves and occasional cawing sea gulls. It was a peaceful way to start the day.
Specific Feedback Requested
Because nature presented no majestic sunrise this morning, I’m interested in feedback on the sky in particular. Is it too hot? Dull? Or is it ok because it would compete with the rocky coastal if more dramatic. I could add a sky in PS, but that seems wrong. Feedback on any other items is also welcome. Thanks!
Technical Details
1/50 sec, f/18, ISO 1250. 24mm on a Sony A7RIII, 24-70 2.8 GM lens. Mostly basic edits: shadows, highlights, slight exposure adjustment. I burned or cloned out white spots on the rocks.
Hi, Marie. I am not a good judge of landscape photography, but I know a little about native plants. The yellow flowers appear to be goldenrod, one of the plants Doug Tallamy calls a ‘Keystone’ plant, due to it’s value to wildlife. Very pretty photo.
I love how the plants frame the scene, and its depth and detail. I think replacing the sky would be difficult, but possibly there is room for more detail to be brought out in it, maybe with something like Nik CEP Tonal Contrast, or some of the TK tools. It looks quite realistic to fade away into the mist so just a light touch might be interesting.
The light is very gentle here. I love the luminosity of the sea and sky. The dark (and lighter) rocks contrast well against that lighter area. The plants don’t work well for me here because their background is so contrasty and makes that area look busy. The end result is that the plant is diminished by the rocks and the rocks are diminished by the plant. If there is a simpler composition without the plant it would likely be stronger.
While I see why you were attracted to the goldenrod or whatever it is, I have to agree with Igor that it makes the photo about those and not the rocks which maybe was your initial idea. There is a lot of banding in the sky which may be due to the jpg compression process, but seems weird with an image so large as this one. It is alas, soft as well which is also odd considering your aperture. That ISO shouldn’t be an issue on that camera, but that might have some contribution to the loss of detail.
But the scene is a lovely one and I can imagine the serenity of starting your day here. The soft light and lapping waves are soporific indeed. I have a friend who lives in Harpswell and remember it being a charming place. No doubt it’s grown over the decades since I was there (in the mid-90s when she bought her house), but the Maine coast doesn’t change that much. I miss it. I used to work on an island in Kittery so could escape to the rocky shoreline at lunch. So nice.
I think this is a lovely coastal landscape and I think the composition works well. I’ll put in a vote to say that I like the presence of the flowers; the green/yellow add a lovely splash of color to an otherwise “low color” scene.
I think though, to maybe make the flowers even more the main subject, a square crop starting from the LR corner could be a nice alternative crop.
The sky is most certainly not too hot and I think reflects accurately the conditions and the light you experienced. I think you were fortunately too that the sky wasn’t just blank - there is some soft clouds and detail that at least gives the sky some interest. And it’s rather interesting and even mysterious that the horizon line obscured with no transition between water and sky.
I liked the way the goldenrod grounded the image, but perhaps it is too busy. I’m wondering if the banding in the sky occurred in post as I tried to bring out more contrast there. It was misty so that was part of the setting as it was. Are you saying the whole image is soft, or just the sky?
Maine does have some very lovely spots. I am really lucky to be here. Thanks for your thoughts!
Thanks so much for your comments. I will play with your crop suggestion and see how it looks. Obviously I liked the flowers in the scene since I took the image that way. It is interesting to see the varied opinions and thoughts on this image.
Marie, this is a lovely seascape photo. I also like the flowers. I think the lines in the lighter stone point to the water, the triangular dark stones also send your eye to the water and even the two larger golden rod flowers point in that direction. The flowers don’t stop my eye at all. I would agree with @Diane_Miller that if you could bring a little more detail to the sky, it would help to make a more dynamic photo. Maybe a light vignette would also help bring your eye in. Nicely done.
Hi Marie. This look like a great spot for seascape photography. Those are some interesting rocks in the foreground. I find that with compositions that have a lot of strong elements in them it can be challenging to get them to work together. In most cases I think you have to start ranking them in order of importance and once you have that hierarchy worked out it can help to guide your capture and edit. I think the two biggest competing elements in this image are the flowers, due to their proximity , colour and saturation, and then the diagonal top part of the image which draws my attention because of the high contrast. There are lots of ways you could go with this but seeing as how you included the flowers in your comp, I decided to reduce the contrast to the diagonal top in LR. The jpeg kind of fell apart with my rough edit but hopefully you get the gist of what I’m saying.
@Donna_Callais - thank you very much. I think all those leading lines is what drew me to compose as I did. I will play around with the sky some more and see how it changes. There is something nice about the misty faded horizon as well, so until I experiment more I’m not sure which sky treatment I’ll prefer. Appreciate your feedback!
@AndreDonawa - What a helpful piece of advice! Yes, often I’m drawn to a composition and take the image with making those ranked decisions more strategically. In some cases it is because I am fighting the clock as the light is rapidly changing. Regardless, the edit you present is a clear improvement to my original post as far as I’m concerned! Thank you so much. I will definitely dial back the contrast. Looks much better!
Still playing with the crop suggestion, but in this newly edited version based on other suggestions I reduced foreground contrast (It was heavy! Thanks for making me see that), reduced saturation and increased vibrance and burned the sky slightly. I also took down the orange luminosity slightly in the rocks and de-hazed the image a bit. I changed the white balance in the sky, adding more warmth. I like it better. In the original there was competition between the parts of the image. Sometimes it takes a third party to find the exact issues with an image. I knew something wasn’t right but couldn’t put my finger on it. Thank you all!
Marie, this looks like a beautiful morning. I like your emphasis on the flowers and the rocky foreground. The curve of distant land adds a fine sense of depth. The sky has enough variety of subtle colors to keep it interesting. The sky does look a bit blocked up, but I expect that’s due to the conversion to 8 bit jpg for NPN. It’s a beautiful New England rocky coast scene. BTW, if you add the repost to the original post it’s easy to switch back-and-forth between the versions to better see what’s been changed. If you do that, add an indicator in the title that you’ve reposted.
Hey Marie! Real quick as it has been said already, the sky is a bit hot. When I am dealing with this, I usually bring the brightness down with a luminosity mask and then dodge and burn areas of the clouds to bring out contrast. Because it’s not just brightness to worry about, it’s depth and contrast as well.
