What changed: Thank you everyone for your input. I fell down the rabbit hole of saturation of an image. Is it just all opinion. How do I make my shot of a day, month or year ago look like it did in real life? Because my raw file is very flat. Anyway, I cut back on the saturation, took out the twigs and got rid of any cars and electrical posts. I personally like landscapes, usually, without those things.
Added after receiving feedback from the community.
The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic + Technical
About This Image
Had a visit to Big Sur and had my new camera so made the most of it. Since landscape in Southern California does not excite me, I don’t take landscape very often. Let alone sea scape. So I am a bit new to the genre. I look forward to your input.
Feedback Requested
Feed back on overall strength of image as well as technical advice
Technical Details
I did not do much to this image other than some saturation and sharpening. I did lighten up the trees and cliffs a bit to make them pop.
This is a good looking view along the California coast. The “sweep” of the foreground tells me that this is a very wide angle view. The big curve of the foreground and the long view up the coast do a good job of pulling my eyes through the frame. The aqua colors in the surf are a good addition
The color of the surf really pulls the eye into this frame, Steve, and the line of the coast helps pull it through the image. The only nit I’d spend time on is removing the tips of the bush/tree poking into the bottom left of the frame.
The composition is nicely done with that large arc provided by the cliffs taking the eye through the entire image. I do feel the saturation is a bit to strong for my tastes and I would back it off, particularly in the FG water and in the sky, but the deep greens a re a bit to deep also.
It’s a beautiful place and your composition shows the best of it. Both the leading line and the descending ridge are great. In addition to what was already said about saturation and the bushes at the bottom, I would try to remove the strongly leaning white pole on the right. The trees at the very end of prespective are leaned too but there is nothing I would do about it. Correcting convergence in editing is possible but it is always causing change of crop and in the case of this image the change is dramatic. However it’s a matter of personal taste and sacrificing convergence for undeniable advantages of the combination of a wide angle with a low/high angle is very common.
That’s a beautiful stretch of coastline Steve, and I agree with @Youssef_Ismail on that dominant curve.
I also agree the saturation is worth playing with more. To my eye, in addition to the sky, the green of the vegetation and red of the rocks is also a bit heavy. The sky and vegetation, and to a certain extent the rocks, are things we see routinely, and so they tend to be a bit more sensitive. The water color, on the other hand, can vary immensely from location to location. I’d be tempted to reduce the saturation only slightly there, because the water color is a very attractive part of the image.
Thank you Youssef. Your critique was clear and simple and I did a little study on the subject of saturation. I won’t be sliding the saturation bar with just the thought of making the shot pop.
