Hi all, I’d love some help and feedback with this.
Taken at blue hour at a local harbour, I caught a boat approaching and went for a long exposure to create a minimalist, long exposure that I thought was a bit different.
Ideally I want to make the red light and reflection less vibrant and prominent (what’s the best way to do this?) and the headlights pop more (again, how?).
Is there anything I can do in post to improve this other than stated?
Thanks in advance
Chris
Chris,
I like this. Most definitely a minimalist kind of image. The effects of the long exposure really emphasize the story of a boat entering the harbour, so that works too. Processing looks good and the luminosity appropriate for the time of day and the “blue hour.” The hue of the harbour light looks a little off to me and perhaps should be more red, rather pinkish (not sure what color to describe) Not a big deal as colors are usually subjective.
I do have a slight conflict with the composition. I really like the square format and the comp with the horizon line/seawall and then the vertical reflection; A great example of the rule of thirds and/or the golden rule. The conflict comes in with the streaking boat. I do like that and it tells a story like I mentioned, but I think this would be great in a more pano format given the seawall, and length of the lights of the boat. But you can’t crop this really because of the harbour light reflection. So really, two comps going on here. Hence the conflict. Maybe conflict is too strong of a word because I still really like this and you’ve most certainly accomplished a minimalist image.
Lon
Thanks Lon I really appreciate your feedback. I have an issue with the brightness of the red light and it seems to dominate the image where I’d like it to be more equal to the headlights.
An easy way to achieve this is to reduce the red saturation of the light from the lighthouse. In photoshop use a Hue Saturation adjustment layer to reduce saturation in the reds only. You might then want to mask this saturation reduction in to only the lighthouse, since the boat lights are red and green. Conversely you could increase red and green saturation, and maybe luminosity of the headlights.
I would be careful as to how much I reduce the lighthouse saturation, I actually find it rather appealing.
Thanks Ed, I’ll have a play
