This is a repost to here your critiques and see how can improve the blending. This was a 2 shot blend. One for the land and one for the waves.
Let me know what do you think
Carlos,
An amazing image! I don’t see anything to be critical of with the blend. Personally, I would back off on the brilliance of the sun as it’s almost overpowering the wave action. I’m not sure that’s a blend issue though. The light balance around, including the ceiling walls, the warm highlights in the water - are all excellent. The waves almost look like they’re frozen - and melting; you know that glossy sheen when ice gets wet?
I think you described this previously, but I’m real curious to understand the cave here. Is that opening where the sun is shining through the only entrance? Are you backed up against something? Does the ceiling get lower… Not that it’s important, but crazy just looking out the entrance and seeing bigger waves out there? What about the tides and “sneaker waves.” Yikes!
This is a wonderful composition. My one comment though would be that it’s actually a bit hard to see what’s going on - the flare from the sun blocks a lot of the frame and the lack of detail in the rock makes it difficult to perceive any depth. Shooting a bit wider or different processing might solve this.
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In the large version, the left wall of the cave has an unusual “ghostly” layer of water overlaying the rock. I’m not sure if that is the blend or the shutter speed??
Also in the larger version, the roof of the cave has amazing color and textures!
You can only access it in low tide and it is not deep. My camera was pretty safe through the shot. I previously lost my A7rii from a wave crash so I am very carefull now:) I always have tha dilema with the sun being so strong in reality it almost does not look right to drop the intensity. Maybe less saturation? I will try.
Thanks
Yea the sun was not in the horizon yet so it was pretty powerful through the entrance. I shot at 16 mm but yo are right. The sun is too present in the frame.
Thanks
Yea it was the mist of the water from the waves with a side sun beam that got intensified by it. I enphazised a little in post so maybe I over did it a little bet.
Thanks
Carlos, I love the composition here, the foreground rocks create a nice counterbalance to the sun. The elements of rocks, water and sun create a very radial feeling in this image. And while one would not normally expect to use a panoramic aspect ratio in a cave, I think it is very effective here.
I agree with Lon’s comment on backing off the luminosity of the sun. But I feel like there are parts of the wave blend that are noticeable upon close inspection. Attached is a detail of the wave area, with the problem areas circled. As @John_Williams already pointed out, the red area looks a little funky, I might just try to blend in rock only in this spot. The green area has noticeable edge halos, you might be able to smooth that out better. The blue area also doesn’t look quite right to me, the waves look like plastic, especially the closest one. I think this image has a lot of potential, I would recommend trying to tweak this wave blending, and addressing the other’s comments as well to rework this.
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Love the comment man. I think I am going to process it again with those recommendations.
Thanks again