The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
The Northern California Mendocino coasts is much less traveled than Big Sur, but at key moments, equally breathtaking. Great gourmet food, redwood hikes, amazing tidepools, elk, home to many artists, loggers, and marijuana cultivators. This image shows layers of light behind the sea stacks and the mountains during a foggy sunrise.
Technical Details
Minimal processing, just contrast and some dodging and burning for luminosity.
Sony A7ii
FE 70-200mm f/4
1/50, f/11
Nice sturdy tripod (forgot which one and who cares anyways!)
Hi Aaron, that sounds like a beautiful location to visit. I think the black and white edit was a good choice. The tonal values get increasingly lighter and help provide nice depth to the image. The darker tones in the main stacks in the foreground help anchor the scene. A long exposure would have been nice to smooth out the water. I also like the repeating patterns in the sea stacks. Nicely scene and photographed.
An intriguing view with a nice gradient of luminosities. I kind of wish for more isolation of the nearest elements, but maybe that wasn’t possible. Did you play with doing a long exposure here? That could be a nice twist on smoothing the water to contrast against the rocks.
It’s a nice image. I particularly like the gradation of blacks which gives a nice sense of depth and distance. There’s some nice detail on the cliffs in the middle distance. The hills and flats are interesting to explore, and the trees are lovely to look at.
Looking again, there is a loss of detail in the rocks in the very FG, the small ones as well as the two large ones on the left and right. It might be possible to open up the shadows/darks in RAW to see if some detail can be recovered, whilst keeping the rocks as dark as possible in order to maintain the illusion of distance.
Finally, I feel the image would benefit from a crop at the top, as the luminosity of the sky exerts a strong pull on the eye to that area. Here’s my attempt (you may like to go further):
I believe I know exactly where this is - it’s a perfect overlook to get those layers in the landscape. The fading away of the hills is perfect. Those foreground rocks feel just a bit too dark to my eye. Maybe raising the shadows and/or exposure on them would make them fit into the tonal gradation of the landscape better. Your framing is great.
Thanks all for the thoughts. I brightened the front rocks a bit and changed the crop slightly. @Alfredo_Mora and @Kris_Smith, a long exposure would have been nice! I’ll think about that next time.
