Sandusky Sunset Abstract

[Bruce Murden]

I was driving on Ohio Rt 2 over Sandusky Bay at sunset a couple of weeks ago. Didn't have my tripod with me, so I turned up the ISO and worked with shorter SS.

Processing: adjusted exposure, curves, contrast, & NR in LR, then some high pass sharpen filtering in PS.

Nikon D80, Nikkor 24-85 f/3.5-4.5 @ 85mm, ISO 250, 1/200 @ f/8, handheld

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Bruce,
Funny.........I was doing these type of images myself in the tetons and Yellowstone. I am posting a re-do only for you to check out..........as I like the original abstract comp very much........but you may want to explore one or both of the tweaks I did. First one.....USM at 30 amount..............60 radius..........0 threshold. Definitely popped the colors. Then I went into filters>blur> motion blur.........everything at default. This softened some of the darker areas of the reflection and IMO made it a bit stronger of an abstrat. A slower SS...........1/60th handheld.........may have achieved the same results. This is definitely of the personal taste thing........but let me know if you like it and may be worth exploring while doing the sharper versions.

[Douglas Bolt]

Hi Bruce,

What Roman did!

I like the colors and how they change from dark to light from bottom to top. I was thinking about how nice a background the image would make to so many advertisements. Smoothing did improve the image for me, but I liked the original also.

[Robert Amoruso]

Nice work Bruce.

You used the color transition to layer the image and add depth but the diagonal ripples are also strong compositional. This image is a great demonstration on how concentrating on the details and finding the image in the image works.

[Bruce Murden]

Thanks for the tips and comments. I like Roman's softening of the image as an alternative way to work the capture.

In the full frame of this image, there is another band of blue/magenta above the orange, which I thought would balance the blues at the bottom, but it weakened the comp and ended up looking noisy (due to the relative size of the ripples farther away).

[John Blumenkamp]

Nice work Bruce... really like how this was 'seen', and then of course captured.