Rocks & Sea

[Kaushik Balakumar]

A slightly old image - made 2 months back in Cannes.
Unfortunately I could not be at this place during the late evening hours which might have given me better sky (!?) & opportunities to go for long exposures. Neither do I own ND filters... :( Have now decided to add couple of them in my kit.

http://www.pbase.com/bkaushik/image/98647430.jpg

Sky is not too interesting either. But I liked these rocks...

Nikon D70s + Nikkor 12-24mm AF-S
f/16, 1/125, ISO200, handheld

[Robert Amoruso]

Kaushik,

Well thought out composition. Even at the 1/125 sec speed, you got a nice blur to the flow in the right FG water that leads the eye into the image. The rocks on the upper right balance the larger FG rocks well and you limited the sky for the reason mentioned - not too interesting.

The image looks a bit soft but I know you have it all in focus because I downloaded it and sharpened it and it looked fine. I think I might have mentioned this in a few of your other posts. Take a look at Artie's post here http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=5598 about 1/2 way down on how he ( I use same method) sharpens his small JPG's.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Kaushik,
Too bad you were not able to be there for a different time of day.........could have been much more dramatic but as Robert said......you did very well balancing the composition out. I was going to mention sharpness........but Robert took care of that pointing out that it is there. Hope you get more opportunities with better light as it makes all the difference in the world.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Thank you Robert & Roman for feedback.
Just a doubt - could you please look into this link which carries the same image: http://www.pbase.com/bkaushik/image/98647430
Sometimes I've found that the original looks sharper than the image that appears here. i.e. the same image when linked here to BPN forum.
Would also request you to take a look at this post where the above issue is obvious: http://www.birdphotographers.net/forums/showthread.php?t=16559

[Robert Amoruso]

Kaushik,

I am seeing about the same level of sharpness for this image here and in the link (do agree that the other image posted had a noticeable difference in sharpness).

Know that as the resolution changes, you need to sharpen after you resize an image. Say you sharpen a larger res image and downsize it, then it will not look sharp. I will not do any image sharpening (excludes creative sharpening) until I size for the final use. In the case of BPN JPGs that occurs once I resize the full res TIFF file as outlined in Artie's method.

On your PBase posting if you go from Original to Large, you can see a noticable sharpness change. Are you linking here to the Large URL? If so that is the problem IMO. I note that the original is greater than 800 pixel in size so not linkable here.

I posted your image here with one round of USM at 175/0.3/0. A bit aggressive but I wanted the difference to be seen.

[Kaushik Balakumar]

Thank you Robert.
Sharpening is always my last step in PP (except on some occasions when I do a 'capture sharpening' which is also followed by a last step of sharpening). And I always link the original size (from pbase gallery) to BPN. But I get your point. If my original is larger than 800 pixels, then the local forum's re-sizing software (if an automated one exists) may be resizing it to 800 which may be the cause softness.
I shall take care of it from here on. Thanks for pointing it out - this factor totally skipped my mind.

[Paul Marcellini]

A nice comp here. As mentioned, better light/sky would really set it off. Regarding the sharpness, it still seems off to my eyes. There almost seems to be a blur around the rocks and edges, while the middle of the rocks seems quite sharp.