January isn’t all that bad in Southern California! Low tide reveals a whole different world to be photographed, I’ve photographed this area many times and I’ll never get tired of it. Every now and then I love combining architectural elements into my nature imagery.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
I’m always open
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
I wish I had the ability to finish and image and just leave it but I can’t. I like the image overall a lot but I can’t decide if I like the amount of foreground, maybe too much. I know the majority of the subject is comprised to the middle of the image but I think it works ok because of the sky and foreground. Any feedback on the composition would be appreciated.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
Single exposure at 15 seconds.
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The light in this image is exquisite. Very well captured and processed. The composition does not work for me. The large rock blocks the transition from the foreground to the sky, basically creating three photos to my eye: the sky, the rock, and the foreground. It’s such lovely light…do you have other compositions to compare it to?
I hear you @Tony_Siciliano about the composition. The light and tide where changing so quickly I didn’t have a chance to try anything else. As a matter of fact, this was my second composition choice. My first didn’t work out at all. Oh well, it was a great evening. Thanks for being honest.
That is one flat out gorgeous looking sky, Andrew! I wouldn’t want to waste it either. I agree with @Tony_Siciliano about the rock as it is so large it just seems to block the viewer. I hope you don’t mind, and this is a rather radical crop, but this works better for me. I know it is not what you had in mind, but I thought I would throw it out there. It could probably use a little more canvas along the bottom as that one rock is to close to the bottom edge with my crop.
I am glad to see that Jan in SoCal is a bit more delicious than Jan in my Seattle area. Good for you to captur and show these interesting elements. Like you, I tend to like strong foreground elements. But others find them a distraction. You have coices about cropping, depending on the story you want to tell… as is the image conveys multiple stories. That is fine, if the stories are not dissonent, but requires patience on the part of viewers. If you wish to simplify you have several crop choices, including Ed’s. Others attached.
But you need to adjust to get horizon level and i think to adjust for perspective distortion of wide lens (pier pilings) :
Hi Andrew. You have captured some fanstastic colours here. Must have been pretty magical to see.
Apologies I’m a bit late to the party here. The others seem to have covered the compositional elements of this shot so I wont bab on about to too much. For what it’s worth the huge rock in the middle of the frame is quite distracting to me. One of the issues is that there is too much open space in front of it. If you had made it the foreground by standing closer and looking down a bit, I think this woruld have worked a bit better. Now I’m babbling. If I had to choose a crop I would go with @Dick_Knudson’s second suggestion.
Right onto something that I noticed. The wedge of light seems slighty at odds with the rest of the sky. I’m feeling that the gradation between the clouds and the bright wedge is too abrupt as a result accentuates the brightness of it. I would play around with some radial filters and see if you can balance it out a bit.
That, combined with the one of the suggested crops could work quite nicely
@Tony_Siciliano@Ed_Lowe@Dick_Knudson@David_Stokely@Eugene_Theron Thank you all for the comments and input, greatly appreciated as usual! As I mentioned in my original comment, I knew the amount of foreground was a bit of an issue but I’ll try the square crop. I print all of my images so I try to stay away from “free hand” cropping. This was one of those nights where the light and tide was changing so quickly I had to react instead of being able to lock in my composition. Oh well, the image may not be what I wanted but I can still remember the magical light I had for about 20 minutes! Thanks again and hope you all are keeping well.
