Shovel Point

[Mike Lentz]

Taken at Tettegouche State park along the scenic north shore in Minnesota, the body of water you see is lake Superior.

http://www.pbase.com/mike_lentz/image/85297776.jpg

Nikon D200 ~ Nikkor 18-70mm w/polarizer and ND filter for longer exposure and a more ethereal water look.
ISO 100 ~ F/18 ~ 3 sec exp.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Mike,
While I like the ethereal look and sky on this one.........something just doesn't quite sit right with me on this one and I can't put my finger on it.......even though I've looked it over for a while. My gut feeling is that there is too much of the shadowed land are on the left that is "muddy looking". I tried a crop from the left just behind the 3rd large evergreen on the land protruding into the image.........seems to strenghten this compositionally overall. You can preobably play around with this comp.........and IMO a bit of sat boost wouldn't hurt.

[Robert Amoruso]

Mike, I like the look of the water, the sky and the glow of the color on the FG rocks. The beach and cliff are a bit dark and kind of drag the image down. In the repost I made a easy correction.

I created a curves adjustment and then creating a point at the middle of the curve dragged up and over - this lightens the whole image but especially the mid-tones. I dragged in until I liked the look of the mid-tones. I clicked OK on the adjustment layer and then created a mask. I painted black where the sky is to get that back to the originally tonality (paint right over the trees as they have no detail). I then changed the brush to a 75% brightness level (191 value for RGB) and painted the rocks and near shore. This made the BG cliff and FG shore and rocks nearly the same in tonality. I also want to reduce the FG some as the increase in brightness due to the initial curves adjustment was too much IMO.

I hope you like the results.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Mike and Robert,
While I think the re-post made big improvements to the FG and rock detail in the shadow area.........I still vote for some sort of crop! I've posted a crop of Robert's correction.....which i feel emphasizes the wave action without loosing too much of the sky ....hope you don't mind Mike and lI would appreciate feedback....positive or negative on the crop .........I can handle it!

[Paul Marcellini]

Haha, I think the duo got it right. Each step was an improvement of a nice picture to begin with. Great stuff.

[Mike Lentz]

Hi Mike and Robert,
While I think the re-post made big improvements to the FG and rock detail in the shadow area.........I still vote for some sort of crop! I've posted a crop of Robert's correction.....which i feel emphasizes the wave action without loosing too much of the sky ....hope you don't mind Mike and lI would appreciate feedback....positive or negative on the crop .........I can handle it!

Oh I can handle it bud, thats why I post. :D I really like the lightening of the image and sorta like the crop job. It may grow on me. I really do appreciate you guys taking the time to help out and re-work images, its what makes this site so good! ;)

[Grady Weed]

Roberts re-post is dynamite. Mike you have a fantastic image here to work with. the colors are outstanding. Re-post your corrected version when it is re-done, assuming you do one differently. This is a nice one!