Shades of Blue

[Hilary Hann]

Image taken late afternoon at Coffin Bay, South Australia. I wanted to capture the shades of blue from the shallow ocean inlet through to the sky.
30D; EF24-85mm at 37mm; f19; 1/250; ISO400

[Ed Vatza]

You certainly succeeded in capturing the range of blues. It looks like some of the white highlights on the water could be toned down just a bit. Actually the water looks quite inviting! :)

[Nick Palmieri]

You did get a lot of nice blues. That FG is definitely interesting. I'm thinking maybe less sky and more FG may make the image more interesting.

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Hilary,
Very good advice given above.....so I took your post and brought it into PS. The image appeared to have a darker vignette around it......was that because of a polariser?......in any case I did a shadow/highlight adjustment on the entire image (only 3% on the highlights).....to bring up the depth of blues in the water. I also kept it minimum in the first pass on the highlights as I liked the distant reflections on the water. I then lassod the shoreline and did another shadow / highlight recovery.....this time with much more emphasis on the highlights ......this tamed the FG highlights and kept all the lovely blues throughout. I did crop to more of a pano and 1/3 sky and 2/3 FG.......and I did prefer this but found that w/o the crop I did like it also.....just not as much. One thing I will recommend for in the field.....do be careful where you focus.....it appears that the camera focused more on the MG......so the FG appears a touch soft......next time focus more abit more toward the FG....about 1/3 of the way into the image.....that will ensure focus throughout.
All in all a very pleasing image.....especially because I love blues.....and captures the seence nicely.....all I did was tweak it! Let me know what you think.

[Nick Palmieri]

Thought the vignette was my monitor. Very nice re-post.

[Fabs Forns]

I like this very much, simple and elegant. I personally add all around vignetting, so original is fine with me. I know Roman does not favor them ;)

[Hilary Hann]

Thanks for the repost Roman, I always find someone else's interpretation really interesting. I like the cropping and tweaks. I did have a polarising filter (and a graduated ND filter) but had increased vignetting when processing the raw image as I thought it helped to draw the eye into the image. I understand that those small differences are personal preferences and I like both adaptations.
You were right of course, I just missed the mark with my focussing.
Thanks everyone for comments and suggestions.

[Robert Amoruso]

Actually I like the vignetting and get that many times I use a polarizer so will not correct for it. I very much like the original and the repost Roman did. As blue is my favorite color and I love the water, I am be impartial but I really feel that you captured the emotion of the scene well and that is what it is all about.

Thanks for posting it.