Juno Beach Pier Sunrise II

[Harold Davis]

taken a few minutes before the one from yesterday. i cloned out a few surfers that were ghosted in the water.

D300, 18-200 at 18mm, f/22, 8s, ISO 200, 0EV, double stacked 3-stop GND filters.

thanks for looking. comments and critiques much appreciated.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Harold, Beautiful light and you nailed the exposure. With the 8 sec exposure it created an appealing silkiness to the water. In your previous image you showed more of the pier which I felt made for a stronger comp. Nicely handled...

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Harold,
First....let me say that I am so proud that you are using the stacked ND's! (weep, weep, sniff, sniff,).....OK.....mushy stuff over.....When I first looked at this I agreed with Dave.....the pier isn't as strong as in the previous post but I felt like him that all the other elements were great......so what to do? I looked at all the elements in the image and started with what I liked the least.....while the sand has a nice curve to it and does act as a nice base.....having it in made the pier seem less important....to small of a focal point. I then looked at the sky......gorgeous....but felt the top could use a bit off of it.....so I thought to myself...pano crop! This will emphasize the relationship between the pier and sun along with the cloud line......so I tried it. Repost shows that with a little more brought out in the sky and pier. You could spend hours working it......and you know what?.....I'm not sure I like the pano better than the OP:eek:!!!...but figured I'd give you an option to explore for yourself.
After all that.....I think you did a very nice job composing it and you nailed the exposure too! Maybe not as nice as the previous....but this one can stand on it's own also!

[Harold Davis]

dave and roman, thanks guys! roman, i worked and looked and worked and looked at this one. i hated that there was so much upper sky that was boring as you know what!!!! i thought about cropping into the pier, but wasnt sure if that was the proper thing to do so i left it. i'll revisit this one again and try some other crops. i think it's worth it.

the reason i didnt include as much pier was because it would have been impossible to do that and include the sunrise.

[David Thomasson]

Beautiful, Harold. I think this one has stronger composition. Both this and the previous shot have two subjects: the pier and the cloud formations.
But in the previous image, the clouds get a bit mixed up with the pier, so that each to some extent interferes with the other where I've indicated here.

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/6707/juno.jpg

In your latest image, these two elements marry nicely and don't interfere with each other. The pier leads the eye smoothly into the cloud formations.
I like Roman's crop. Excellent, Harold! :D

[Dave Mills]

Harold, Another thought to consider is in the repost David provided the pier becomes the integral part of the image. The merging clouds don't bother me in the slightest. In the second post the pier is acting more as an anchor than a key element in the image...

[Robert Amoruso]

Harold, All good points above. I do like the water silky as you presented and agree with Roman's cropping suggestions.

[Don Hamilton Jr.]

Robert, awesome pictures!! There's more than one way to present this image! Nicely Don!
Don

[Paul Marcellini]

Beautiful sunrise, I have been meaning to get a pier shot myself. I like the pano idea but like the water action as an additional line. I would crop the sky more and leave the bottom alone.

[Harold Davis]

thanks for all the replies! i think i'm gonna try paul's suggestion and leave the beach. i like it too much.

[David Thomasson]

thanks for all the replies! i think i'm gonna try paul's suggestion and leave the beach. i like it too much.

A third alternative is a pano crop, but use content-aware scaling (if you have CS4) to pull the beach up into the foreground.

http://img4.imageshack.us/img4/8228/junow.gif

[Dennis "Curly" Buchner]

Great post Harold as many different views

[Harold Davis]

david, you gave me an idea!! i have CS3. no free transform, BUT!! i cropped a little off the top, then used the rectangular marguee tool and selected the entire image. squooshed it from the top and bottom. then i used the same tool again and selected the area between the bottom of the first piling and the frame edge and moved it up more, creating even more of a pano. so what you see is not real. but then again, what ever is!!!

never thought this thread would be so good. thanks everyone for participating and helping out.

[David Thomasson]

david, you gave me an idea!! i have CS3. no free transform, BUT!! i cropped a little off the top, then used the rectangular marguee tool and selected the entire image. squooshed it from the top and bottom. then i used the same tool again and selected the area between the bottom of the first piling and the frame edge and moved it up more, creating even more of a pano. so what you see is not real. but then again, what ever is!!!

never thought this thread would be so good. thanks everyone for participating and helping out.

You don't need content-aware scaling for this. Given the "featureless" texture of the water, a plain transform will do. I tried this by


selecting an area as shown here and copying that onto a new layer.
Hit Ctrl-T to put a transform box around that and push the bottom up as far as you like.
Put a mask on that layer and paint with a soft brush on the left to blend out the hard edge of the selection.
Crop off the bottom.

Very easy.

http://img695.imageshack.us/img695/6351/juno1.jpg

[Harold Davis]

that's a whale of an idea!!! i like the heck out of that! thanks, david. i gotta try that just to get the practice doing it. more than one way to skin a cat.

[Morkel Erasmus]

some great tips in this thread! like your image, Harold, and your last repost sits best with me. gorgeous light and colours.