Sliver

I thought a different take on the stacks with this light was interesting. Had an eerie feel when I was shooting this…

Specific Feedback Requested

Composition and processing. Should the texture of the rocks be brought out more or just as is?

Technical Details

70mm f/13 1/20 iso 50

This is definitely dark and moody, Mario. Is this shot into the sun? It looks like the sky area is a bit blown out. It’s also a bit hard to get a sense of the scene…possibly a bit too dark? Although I like the luminosity on the sea stacks. Wonder if you can keep that luminosity while lightening up the shadows…hmmm.

Thanks @David_Bostock . That is exactly what i was wondering about. Repost below.

Nice work on the repost, Mario. I think you could crop about a third of the bottom beach away and have an even more impactful image. This is so much better, Mario. Nicely done.

Nice shot Mario. I prefer the original…the lightness added to the large stacks looks unrelistic to me, given that the sun is behind the rocks.

As with a number of your recent posts, this one is need of cropping. I like the general gist of the original post and wouldn’t bring up the detail in the rock faces because this image isn’t about the rock faces, it is about what they are framing - the sunset and the reflection. And it is a beautiful framing. Which is my point - personally, I’d crop it square taking some off the bottom and a lot off both the right and left. In my opinion, the only reason for those rock faces is to act as a frame, which they do beautifully. But beyond that, they don’t need to be there. To me, the rework completely undermines the power and the point of the photograph - which are those sensuous curves that act as a frame.
Technical nit: Use the clone tool set to “Darken” to eliminate the haloing, which is quite prominent on the edges of both rock faces.

Perhaps I am too much a fan of @Cole_Thompson 's work, but I don’t find the scene, overall, to be too dark. Not even close. There is ample detail throughout the scene to get a feeling for, well, the scene, and in the rework you posted below, as others had mentioned, it appears unnatural for there to be so much light on the rocks when they are backlit.

I would agree with @Kerry_Gordon about cropping this piece a bit, perhaps square or 5:4, to eliminate some of the rocks off each side. I really like the texture in the rock face on the right side, however, so I would be more inclined to cropping more off the lefthand side than the right. This would have the added benefit of shifting the sliver of light away from the center, albeit slightly. (I played around with the file a bit in Photoshop and found that a 5:4 ratio would look rather nice, if you keep the righthand side as-is.)

I also agree with @Kerry_Gordon that something should be done about the haloing around the rocks. I’d definitely take the advice given about that.

Otherwise, nicely done!