I caught a pretty good sunset on the coast about a week ago. I wanted to get water moving across the rocks with some good color in the sky and I found this spot near Davenport. Waves were coming in on the left side of the rocks and spilling down into this crevice and flowing back out. I tried to remove the most of the color cast from my ND filter which usually warms the image a bit too much and was also giving the water a bit too much magenta. I just didn’t want to over cool it and take out the orange from the sunset.
Mainly processing
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Pretty Happy with my Comp but any suggestions would be welcome.
Any pertinent technical details:
Canon 5d mark 3 16-35 F4 L @ 16
10 Stop BW ND Filter
This was a blend of 3 bracketed images
Base image was 8 seconds F/6.3 ISO:640
You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.
Hi David. You got a really great shot here. The first thing that jumped out at me was that the foreground rocks seem very warm. You did mention that some of your processing may have led to that. I would think about cooling it down a bit. I think that the balance between the sky and the foreground seems out of kilter to my eye, but I cant really put my finger on why that is…maybe someone else could jump in here. Maybe if you brought down the saturation in the sky that may help.
Love the composition and the textures in the pool.
I agree with Eugene. A really great shot - the processing could use some work here as the whole image has this red color cast that doesn’t seem entirely natural. I think it’s the water and dark shadows that could use some cooling to provide some visual contrast from the rest of the scene.
I like the composition a lot, David. There is a decided curve to the horizon that that should not be too difficult to fix using the skew tool in PS. I also agree about the color cast. Once you straighten the horizon line, you should be able to select the water and the foreground and cool it off. This is a nice image that deserves some fine tuning to make it a great one.
-P
Thanks for the feedback everyone, I straightened the horizon and tried to cool it down a bit. I just needed to mess around in PS a bit, I kept trying in Llightroom and it just ended up cooling the image way too much. I might mess around with it a bit more and try to get a bit more orange back in the clouds but I think it looks much better than before.
The rocks are composed really well. The farthest point of the rock points directly to the brightest point in the sky. Bit unfortunate about the slight overlap of the right side rocks with the left side that occurs in the center of the image. What made you decide to pull out the 10 stop? I think what this image really needs is some movement in the water and the channel in the center of the image seems perfect to get some interest going. Really a lost opportunity unfortunately. Processing is very monotone, the sky looks great but I’m unsure why the water is pink/brown?
David, the composition here is excellent, and I like the colors in your re-post much better than the original. The original had both too much magenta and red. My only other suggestion on the re-post would be to burn down the bright water in the upper right side of the image, it feels too bright relative to it’s surroundings.
Along with the others, I really like your composition and how the natural jetty leads the eye up and through the frame to the beautiful sunset. I also like your choice of proportions where it’s clear the rock and tide action is the main story and with the sunset given less space, it doesn’t overwhelm the scene (but still adds to the beauty of it.) Well done.
Personally, I don’t think the color is off by much, if at all. Clearly within the realm of personal choice. To me there should be some reflected color in the wet rock given the sky. Here’s an attempt with some minor changes. I just used a quick “Selective Color” layer in PS with some adjustments to the neutral colors: -5 Yellow, -10 magenta and +12 cyan (which popped the blues in the sky a bit too, but I lowered the opacity by painting the adjustments from the sky. Also burned down the rock and white water above the rock on the right. A tad darker is consistent with the fact the sun has gone down. Again, very minor adjustments and certainly a personal preference. An image definitely worth tweaking.
Nice. I’m liking the repost rendition. I think you could back off on the greenish/yellow tint in the shadow a little bit but overall the colors have more separation in this version.
Thanks for the feedback on the rework. I think I’m starting to get the image in the right direction.
@Michael_McGee I chose to use the 10 stop mainly because its the only ND Filter I have for my 16-35 but I was also shooting directly into the sun so it was pretty bright even after it set. I took a bunch of different exposures for movement for this one but I felt that this longer exposure was the best one since the water was flowing rather slowly.
@Lon_Overacker
I like your re-edit because I would like to keep some color in the rocks as the sky was pretty orange at the time and really cast the color on everything. I think in my first edit it was a bit overdone from the warm cast of the ND filter. I tried your selective color edit numbers on the neutrals but was left with a much cooler image than you have here, not sure how much you brought down the opacity .
Here’s another Re-edit trying to take in consideration some more of the feed back I got. I did a few selective color adjustments to try to get rid of the magenta tint to the water, keep the orange in the sky and keep the rocks a bit more orange but not over done. I also burned the rock and white water on the right side very slightly to keep it inline with the rest of the image. Thanks again for the feedback I feel its looking a lot better now.
Very interesting to see the evolution. This is a strong image, so worth the effort. So I also made an attempt, starting with the original image. I don’t mind to leave a bit of reddish/magenta color in the water in the crevice, it’s a bit too grey for me in the last post. After all, this is a sunset image. Following the suggestion of others I darkened the sea in the upper right a bit.
Something that cannot be changed in post-processing: for me the strip of water between the rocks in the distance and the horizon is very thin, the rocks more or less touching the horizon. A higher viewpoint would create a bit more space between the rocks and the sky. I would like to see a little more sea above the rocks there.
