It was a cold morning this past spring and the waves had been showering me with spray . By the time i took this i was pretty cold and in retrospect would have moved the composition to the right to include a little more of the tree trunk and probably down some to include more of the roots.
Specific Feedback Requested
It is rare that I shoot images that are this bright so everything about it seems a little off to me
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Canon 5DM4. Iso 1000 to achieve a shutter speed of 1/125 to capture the waves. 24 mm lens shot at f/8.0
Welcome back to NPN. Nice to see another Wisconsin shooter. Is this Lake Michigan by any chance? A terrific location for sure, but yeah…it’s a little problematic. To me this suffers from HDR-itis, but all may not be lost.
You could have benefitted from a couple of things - using a graduated ND filter in the field or taking multiple shots and blending them. The sky and the foreground need different exposures to get them right. To my eye they are both too bright as you say.
You also might benefit from starting over with a Linear Profile that can help preserve highlights and shadows and makes for a more neutral starting point for processing.
Since all I had was your jpeg, I did what I could to make a more natural appearing image, but I don’t think it’s still as good as it could be. I brought it into Camera Raw and lowered the overall exposure and applied a couple of gradient filters to manage the tonal ranges in both the foreground and sky. I left the water alone except for some brush work to deepen the shadowed sections. I did the same with a couple of brushes on the rocks. I also moved the white balance a little warmer and reduced the magenta cast.
I hope you don’t mind since this is such a terrific scene with good potential. I really like the shutter speed (maybe stopping down v. bumping ISO would have produced the same results) and the roots tell the story of survival on these rough shores.
Thanks for all of the great suggestions. Yes it is Lake Michigan in Door county. To be honest I’m a little embarrassed by this shot. By the time I took it I was so cold and wet that I didn’t take the time I should have to compose it and take separate images of the sky and land. My frustration with what I was left with resulted in me over processing the image. Thanks again for the suggestions.
You found a very nice scene and photographed it well. I think you can salvage a lot from the exposure. @Kris_Smith has a very good point about the linear profile and other suggestions. If you don’t mind a little cloning, it should be possible to remove the base of the FG trunk that slopes up on the right edge. If you can make the FG wood pieces simpler there – i.e. level – it would probably work well to add a little canvas on the right with content aware fill.
I can’t decide whether I like the tree or not. If you crop it off it does make a good composition with the stump as the main point of focus.I really like the sea and the sky. The shore looks HDRish though. If you could fix that it would be good.
