Tagged as United Kingdom as there’s no Ireland tag… this was captured at the Cliffs of Kerry.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
I can’t decide if the color in they sky is a touch overdone, either too saturated or too orange (or both). I’m happy with everything else but am always open to input on other areas, as well.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
This is an HDR blend in Lightroom as the scene was extremely dynamic given the timing. Exposures taken at 1/6 of a second, 1/2 second, and 1.6 seconds.
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
Michael, this is a lovely view. The sunlight on the foreground is great. The cliffs and distant shore add a strong sense of depth. The lighting looks natural. I do wonder if you might tone down the brightest area along the left a bit letting the details there show through a bit more but keeping the dense of looking into the sun.
Michael,
I agree with Mark’s thoughts on this wonderful image. If you can pull any more detail out of those bright areas he mentioned it would elevate this scene another notch. As far as the sky the saturation and the orange look just fine to me. I particularly like that light on the FG cliff edge as it shows off some lovely details.
Michael, what a dramatic scene, and you got it in awesome light too !!! I like your composition a lot, it lines re-inforce the feeling of having a sweeping view of this landscape. It just pulls your eye around in a reverse C shape. While this is very subjective, i like the colors and saturation you have used in your processing here. IMO this saturation looks appropriate for a strong sunset like this.
I agree with @Mark_Seaver and @Ed_Lowe about the blown highlights, in fact I would expand your blue circle of problem area even a bit further to the right. Just for fun I downloaded it to see how much highlights could be recovered. I used Lights 4 luminosity masks to target the brightest highlights. And somewhat counter intuitively, made a Darks 2 Luminosity selection to burn the darks in that area too. If I could get this much back from a Jpeg, you should be able ot recover more from the raw file. I also did some contrast increase in the rest of the sky, and dodged the sun ray in the water.
A grand and beautiful seascape. I especially like the sunset reflecting in the sea as well as that light striking the foreground. The color/saturation looks good to me, no concerns there.
I do agree with the others on the highlights and I think Ed’s rework is excellent. The only other thing I was going to mention would be to increase the luminosity of the mid-ground cliffs. That of course is in the personal choice arena, but to me I would think the rocky cliffs would be receiving just a little more light. A very minor and personal preference though for sure.
