Ningaloo sunset

[Jerry van Dijk]

Another sunset from Western Australia. This is at Tantibiddi boatramp, one of the few places where an opening in the Ningaloo coral reef allows boats to get out to sea.

Nikon D7000, Nikkor 16-85mm @ 24mm, resting on rock, ISO-640, f/14, 1/15 sec.
Photomatix Pro 3 image HDR, 1EV steps. ACR 6.3 curves, clarity, sharpness.



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[Jerry van Dijk]

Sorry, that should be Tantabiddi boat ramp.

[Robert Amoruso]

Jerry,

Impressive sunset nicely rendered. Good composition with the leading line of the poles guiding the viewer into the image.

I like the rendering the the sky with the HDR treatment. In the FG, the rocks have a gray-muddy look to them. I find this happens a lot with Photomatix to me. Perhaps merging one of the HDR shots with good FG detail on a new layer and using a reveal mask, paint in the rocks. I do this when I don't like how the shadows turn out in the HDR treatment.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Robert, thanks for your comments. Although I agree with you that Photomatix often muddles colors, the rocks in this case actually look like this. They are very worn down calcareous rocks with all sorts of sea stuff sticking to them. I actually was surprised that they came out so well, looking like they did in real life. I'll have another look at the original images though.

[Jerry van Dijk]

I just checked the original and the rocks in the HDR are quite comparable to the original capture.

[Rachel Hollander]

Hi Jerry - nice clouds and sunset colors. Looks like a tranquil scene. My first thought was that the fg rocks should be sharper but I see your response to Robert. If your ethics allow, I would get rid of the grey call box (?) on or next to the first piling.

TFS,
Rachel

[Jerry van Dijk]

Thanks Rachel, that box was bothering me already. Now you mention it too, I'll see if I can remove it. I'll try some extra sharpening on those rocks too.

[Michael Libbe]

Lovely image and composition. I like how you have the poles leading the eye to the sunset.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Jerry,
I really like the comp here. Excellent separation of the elements. Some good tweak suggestions mentioned. All in all very well done!

[Morkel Erasmus]

Hi Jerry...
My apologies for being a tad late to this one. Nice sunset and interesting composition using the boats and the boatramp to juxtapose each other.
Looks quite good for a Photomatix result...:eek3:...and by that I mean it doesn't look as "photomatix-ey" as I would have expected :e3

I took the liberty of punching up the shadow and midtone contrast in your FG rocks in this repost, as well as a slight boost in overall saturation.
WDYT?

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Morkel, thanks for looking. The contrast boost did wonders for the apparent sharpness of those rocks. I tried heavy sharpening without result but completely ovelooked the possiblity of upping the contrast. I do find that the rocks are somewhat overpowering in your version and they're not the prettiest subject. I like what the extra saturation did for the colors in the sky, but do feel that the image as a whole starts to look "photomatix-ey" again :S3:. I still haven't found the time to really get into luminosity masking, so I'm still relying on photomatix to do part of the work for me. But it's good to be reminded every now and again :w3!

Here's a repost with all suggestions used. I did some selective color tweaks (oranges, yellows and blues) to retain a natural look in the sky despite the saturation boost and prevent excessive clipping in the orange part.