Black beaches are a unique feature of New Zealand’s south island on the west coast. Captured in the transition between sunset and the blue hour, this image conveys both serenity and eeriness. This is a rework of the original image made in 2012. The white dot on the horizon line is a distant ship. To me. this dot of contrast adds to the interest of the image. Does it?
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Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D80 (oldie) 18-200mm kit lens at 52mm, .4seconds, f13
Marvelous!
What a strong visual. The black of the beach, gray of the water an sky, and a touch of color. The color is there, but the melancholy surrounding the small inkling of happiness is perfect.
Blue sky, bluebirds, unicorns, daisies, and orchids aren’t always necessary a great image.
Namaste
Thanks, Paul, Namaste. I appreciate your comment. I see the image exactly as you have described.
This is a lovely image Larry, I think with some post-processing it has the potential to be exceptional. The thing that was most lacking is bringing up the lighter tones, this is what brings the image to life. I also adjusted the colors to remove a cyan cast and make it a bit cooler overall. Then I added some warmth to only the lighter tones to give a slight color contrast. I also cloned out the bright spots in the sky as they are quite distracting. I also darkened the top of the sky quite a bit to help keep the eye drawn in. I also added a lot of contrast to the clouds by darkening the darker tones and lightening the lighter ones. I used the TKPanel to select the right tones, but this could be done in Lightroom, etc. as well.
If you would like to see what I did in Photoshop you can download the file with layers here. This would have been much simpler working with the raw file, but it will give you some ideas.
This is just my vision for it and you can take it with a grain of salt!
Thanks, David, for your reply with a detailed explanation off your edits. Yours is certainly a different vision of the image than I had. I like it, but it changes the mood and message than I had. For the fun of it, I will play with a duplicate of the image using your vision. Thanks again, David.
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Larry, I prefer the darker, moodier look of your original presentation of the image. The sky and black sand beach create a very ominous mood that I like. Regarding the white dot, it is so small that it pales in comparison to the patches of yellow in the sky, which to me are really what create contrast here. So I would clone the white dot away.
I do agree with @David_Kingham about two elements of his critique, the potential of the yellow patches to be a distraction, and the need for more vitality in the lighter tones. To me the yellow becomes an issue because there are two patches, with each on an edge, so they compete with each other. Regarding luminosity, I’d keep the darker tones dark (especially the beach), but would slightly lift the lighter tones. I think it would especially benefit the white surf.
Here is a rework where I did these tweaks. I kept the larger of the yellow patches but cloned away the other (and the ship). I also flipped the image horizontal, to have a left to right flow of the beach that leads to the yellow sky patch on the (now) right. It’s different, but I wanted to throw the idea out there.
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Thanks for your reply and interesting take on this image, Ed. I like what you have done, but my eye doesn’t relate well to the horizontal flip. I will cone out the white dot and look more into the yellow. The dark look definitely matches my vision.
