Off To The Beach

[Richard Waas]

I photographed this image on St. George Island, Florida with my Canon 5D MKII. ISO 200, f/4.0, 1/2000 sec, EF24-105mm f/4.0L IS USM, 24mm, Evaluative Metering, Auto Exposure, Auto WB, No Flash. Converted to B&W. Comments Welcome.

[Bruce Murden]

I like where you've started here, and I think it's a good subject for BW. The comp has good triangles of interest in the land, path, & land, and the obvious leading lines bringing us in to the BG.

To further enhance you image, I'd crop a bit off the top to remove the horizontal cloud, leaving only the puffy irregular clouds. I think you should bring up the shadow detail in the land detail on either side of the path. A split ND/grad filter would have allowed you to bring up the land detail while holding the highlight detail in the clouds. Alternately, you could take two exposures, one for sky and one for land, and blend them -- or double process your RAW file, once for highlight, once for shadows

Here is one possible direction you can go with this image. I used LR on your JPG to adjust contrast, bring down the "lights" and bring up the "darks", but letting shadows stay black. I may have lost too much pure white here, but I hope you get an idea for how to further enhance your image.

[Dave Mills]

I like how Bruce cropped the image dividing it roughly to 2/3 by 1/3. Thought I would bring the image up more in S/H.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Richard,
Very nicely composed here. I do agree with Bruce on the top band so a slight crop was the way to go. I like the way both of them brought out the shadow areas yet maintined and even enhanced the sky. I may go somehwer in between with the corrections as Bruce's is just a hair dark and Dave's a bit bright. Really like the way you used the posts and path......even the tire treads work here with just the right amount of dunes and grasses. Very well thought out and composed.

[Richard Waas]

Thanks guys for all the help. This is why I love BPN. Roman, sorry, I forgot the ND grad filter, it really would have helped.....