Weekly Challenge: beach scenes

Here is my version of the iconic arch in Big Sur. The light only lights up this arch for a few weeks around the winter solstice. If there is a heavy marine layer or clouds, common that time of year, you don’t get the effect.

1 Like

Tony: Great timing and a wonderful capture. Most excellent. >=))>

Thanks. Here is what it looked like there once when there was clouds/marine layer (the right edge of the large arch rock is on the left). The magenta was so intense I had to decrease it in post processing.

Tony,

Of course here in CA this is a pretty popular spot (although I’ve never been surprisingly.) I’m just surprised you managed to avoid the 'togs!

The light through the tunnel is beautiful of course. Now I know that the back side of the rock is on the opposite side of the sun, so the light/shadow is appropriate. I do wish for a tad more detail in the shadow of the rock. Yeah, it’s a fine line to draw to keep it real.

Certainly a beautiful capture from Natural Bridges. Cool entry to the WC as well.

Lon

Tony,

Love the surf and rocks in the post-sunset image. Yeah, the sky does get pretty intense - but I can see a stand alone image right there in the rocky surf.

Lon

Real nice take on the iconic location. I would agree with @Lon_Overacker about opening up the shadows just a bit, but by no means a big deal in this one. Looks like a window to the next world.

Tony, somehow I missed this when you posted it. The light through the tunnel is great. I like how it gets to the corner of the frame. The gentle colors in the sky look good also. While I could see some dodging on the shadow side, the strong contrast here looks appropriate. It might be worth trying some dodging and doing a side-by-side comparison. An interesting feature of human vision is that we only see 3-4 stops worth for a fixed pupil size, the eye-brain combo resolves around 10 stops because we constantly adjust pupil size. Meanwhile, today’s digital cameras can handle around 6 stops. That digression is a long way of explaining why some shadow dodging might be good… The blue/magenta combo in your second post is quite striking.