Waves

[Dave Leroy]

Taken about a month ago on Oregon Coast looking west into setting sun.
7D, 24/105mm at 65mm, 1.3 sec., f/22, Av, ISO100. Strong offshore wind so lots of spray coming off the breakers rushing in.

[Dennis Bishop]

That's a great image, Dave. I like the energy, colors, and composition (the white water is pretty much bounded by the horizontal divine proportion lines). The illumination in front of the dark wave takes it up another notch. Wonderful sky, too. I was surprised -- but glad to find out -- that there'd be that much detail in such a relatively long exposure.

[Robert Amoruso]

Dave,

I like the smoothness of the wave action at the 1.3 sec shutter. I find the dark sections holding my eye too much. I reposted with the shadows opened up substantially and some local contrast enhancement added to bring out the details.

[Dennis Bishop]

Hmmm. What about a compromise? The top half would be comprised of Robert's version with the increased contrast. The bottom would be Dave's original with the lower contrast. I find the higher contrast in the bottom draws my eye too much to the foreground. It's no doubt a personal preference thing, but the blue, there, is too intense for me, and the contrast is making the the change in profile of the sand (front to back) look too sudden -- almost like a vertical drop.

[Dave Leroy]

Thanks Dennis and Robert.

I took the opportunity to go back to the TIFF file and used an adjustment brush in ACR and then a bit more work in CS4 to open up the darker parts a bit, some selective highlighting and local contrast enhancement.
I like Robert's suggestion but the added colors throw me off a bit.

I think I have more details showing. Hard to figure out a sharpening routine with a photo like this though. In the end I used Smart Sharpen at 100% and .4 and then brushed over the top clouds at 50% to reduce the bit of added noise.

[Brendan Dozier]

Very nicely composed image, Dave, your repost is a good compromise. Great mood, like the soft blur to waves, and touch of light in the clouds and on the water. Well done.

[Dennis Bishop]

I like what you did with the re-post, Dave. Especially opening the shadows.

Because you shot this at sunset, I decided to see what it would look like with more sunset color while retaining the blue. Some of the change is due to changing the saturation and lightness of specific colors with adjustment layers. Some is from a masked warm photo filter adjustment layer. I also increased the contrast in the clouds.

[Dave Leroy]

I really like the nice soft warm glow to this one. Thanks Dennis. And thanks Brendan.

[Robert Amoruso]

Yes I was never too happy with the FG colors that showed up in the repost I did. I like the progression here and think Dennis' repost was the right direction to go.

[Bob Miller]

Dave i like your compromise repost but would still like to see less color in the very bottom fg ( almost like the OP)

[Matt Fragale]

I don't think I dislike the OP at all, nor do I really dislike any of the reposts. It's a really nice picture and I think it would come down to individual tastes of the person viewing it which version they would like. I guess if I had to pick, I'd like the fg to be like the OP and the skyline of the last repost with the extra color in the sky.