Down the beach..

[Don Railton]

Hi Guys, Hope you all are having a great Christmas..!!

I took a few hours off last evening (Christmas Day) with at camera at the local beach. Found a few rocks covered in see weed I tried to make something out of. what do you think..? the sky is a bit weird in one spot which I have tried to fix but I am still not happy with. I had a Cir Pol on the lens and I think that's responsible for the dark blue spot in the sky. I need to play to be sure but social duties are calling.. I will comment on other images later on today..

1D4 + 18mm Zeiss Distagon
1/2 sec at F22 ISO 160 on tripod.

Processed in ACR. Adjusted levels then imported into CS6. I then started played with fixing a dark blue spot in the sky using the dodging/burning tool which I rarely use (as you can see). A bit dust spot removal and cropping to a 2:1.

regards to you all

DON

[Diane Miller]

A polarizer will really bring out tonal gradients in a wide-angle sky. Best fix is to shoot one with the polarizer and one without and composite the two in PS.

I love the rocks and waves, but if it was me I'd crop it just below the horizon and go for the interest in the FG rather than do a normal landscape presentation.

[Dave Mills]

Agree with Diane on this. Your interest is in the foreground. The rest of the image doesn't appear to carry it's weight. Nice light with a soft,silky water flow.

[Morkel Erasmus]

Love the FG colours here Don, and I agree, crop out the sky and even the distant "land" horizon - make it all about the water around those rocks!
:5

[Don Railton]

Hi Guys

Thanks for the comments and suggestions, and I hope you all had a great Christmas... Just back from a short trip down south with the grandkids, so I have been a bit tardy with my response. Please accept my apologies...

I kept the distant beach and Marina as context for the image, but I have 3 opinions I very much respect saying that the content in the BG are not worth the pixels allocated to them. I do understand that a beach and distance featured mean little to those who have never seen it, so I have a repost with them removed. I now have a slight concerned that the rocks upper RHS are cramped, and that the rocks are a little too centered, but at least there is no doubt about the image subject...

regards

DON

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Don, my first thought was to crop out all the upper stuff and make it about the wave movement around those killer rocks. I think in your repost you could crop down just a touch more to below that lone rock in the upper right. Hope you have a Happy New Year!

[dankearl]

I like the repost and the water is great looks great.
The greens are a bit electric for my taste and the image is a bit bright overall.
Very nice IQ....

[Don Railton]

OK, here is my final 'cut' of this image, posted simply to complete the story and I am not expecting any reply's... I have made the final into a 3:1 pano crop, so its the same width as the OP but mostly cut from the top to achieve the 3:1. The processing is minimal, simply levels adjustments in ACR. The hardest part of getting this image was cleaning the tripod, it took over an hour..!! Dan, the 'electric' green is pretty true to colour, however the sun was very low and pumping a warm glow into everything on that side of the rock..

Thanks again to you all for the comments and suggestions...

DON

[Don Lacy]

The finale repost is the comp I saw as soon as I open the thread, to my eye the highlights and mids are to bright so I toned them down with a layer set to overlay and filled with 50% grey, I then used various luminosity mask to target the highlights and mids separately.

[Don Railton]

Hi Don

Happy new year..! Thank you for taking the time to work on the image. I am not sure why, but when I look at my last repost and your post on the BPN site I see no difference....So to check what you had done I copied my last post and yours back into CS6 making sure not to chance the colour space. Wow... I really like what you have done, and its not overdone. So now I don't understand why I cannot see your changes when viewing on the BPN site... I need to check a few things and figure this out. Can I assume you could see the difference when you posted? I did compare my image prepared for posting against the image of mine copied back from BPN and saw no difference. Confused...

best regards,
DON

[Don Lacy]

I can see the difference but it is more subtle on BPN I think it has to do with the way our browsers handle color.

[Hazel Grant]

I see Don's version as much lighter, less contrast. Have to think about preferences there. Like the final crop that focuses on the power of the sea rather than being just another seascape photo.

[Don Railton]

Hi Hazel, thanks for that, and that's what I saw in photo shop...but not in BPN.

Don


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Don Railton]

I can see the difference but it is more subtle on BPN I think it has to do with the way our browsers handle color.

Hi Don,

Don't think you embedded a colour profile in your version of this image, I presume in this case the browser assigns what its thinks is right/close. Different browers = different colour spaces assigned. This might account for the differences..

Regards

DON

[Diane Miller]

When I try to open Don Lacy's (in Pane 9), PS warns me that it doesn't have an embedded profile. (Set that in Edit > Color Settings. Check Profile Mismatches to get the warning.) The lack of a profile tag will cause some browsers to display an image incorrectly. A browser won't assign what it thinks is close -- different ones will make different assumptions, many of them incorrect, even if the image is sRGB. That's a sad situation, but the way it is. To ensure people see your images as best they can, it is mandatory to both convert ti sRGB when you make the JPEG, and tag (embed) the profile.

http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php/122407-How-to-Prepare-Images-for-the-Web

Panes 8 and 9 look identical to me here on the forum, as I have my browser set to assume an untagged image is sRGB.

When I open it in PS and tell it to assign (i.e. assume it is) sRGB they look almost identical. But if I stack them I see Pane 8 is just a little brighter, but don't see major differences.

[Don Lacy]

Sorry about the color profile not sure what happened when i get home I will repost.

[Don Lacy]

Here is the tagged version

[Don Railton]

Thanks Don