Dog beach sunset...

[Don Railton]

Hi all

We have had a few summer thunderstorms recently and they are very good for generating nice cloud formation at sunset. So I wandered down the beach thursday night and captured the following. Hope you enjoy it... At the beach I got talking with a lady who was almost tearful that she was due to leave to return to her village in Italy. She was very grateful that the snow was so bad in her village that she could not travel and had to stay in Perth longer. Hard to believe we all live on the same planet sometimes...

To make this image I used;

1Dmk 4 and my Zeiss 18mm manual lens fitted with B+H Cir Pol filter
AP mode at F14 and a shutter speed of 1/4 sec
ISO 100
Tripod and cable release.
One thing I forgot to check was the focus and i have a feeling I may have bumped it off a little. The F14 saved me somwhat but I am annoyed with myself. Don't get a sky like this every day... With the remote release I was composing through the eyepeice but not triggering the shutter while looking though the eyepeice. As a result i did not miss the lack of beep confirming focus (or lack of...)

Processing:
Import the RAW image using ACR setting levels
then in PS4 I did some spot removal & leveling the horizon.
I then run a little action which sets up individual layers for levels, curves, saturation and selective colour.
I then go through and adjust each layer in that order and merge the result.
then do a sanity check and tweek opacity to ensure the final image is as I want it.
Add my name and then size and sharpen for posting.

DON

[Brendan Dozier]

What a beautiful and wild looking sky, Don! Wonderful cloud formations, color & light. Looks like your adjustments in levels and curves really helped bring out the drama and mood. Wishing for just a little bit more on the bottom, but overall great looking composition.

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Don, that is one impressive sky! I like the painterly look. I feel you should have included more of the water to "ground" the image. Furthermore I think you could have gotten more out of the sky by playin with levels and (local) contrast. I've got a go at it (hope you don't mind) and came up with this. I processed in ACR6.3, added fill light to open up the dark parts of the clouds to balance the image more. I added clarity to enhance the structures in the clouds and added a slight bit of overall contrast. Then I applied a simple levels adjustment, dragging the sliders to just not clip the histogram. Finally I added a little sharpness. I used the clone tool to get more water and used the blur/smudge tool to get rid of the cloned look (of course it still looks crappy, but it was just to get the idea for the compositional effect :S3:).

[Robert Amoruso]

Don,

I like the diagonal leading lines created by the clouds to and from the sun's location.

May I suggest that you use the DOF scale on the lens to manually focus setting the infinity mark at the shooting aperture.

I understand you where looking to minimize the water, but I feel the image lacks a suitable anchor at the bottom when so little water is show. I would suggest the image can be improved by including more of the water. Doesn't have to be a lot, just more then shown here to provide a balance to the much heavier image top.

[Don Railton]

Thanks for the terrific comments and input guys... I have many other shots of that night and will post more soon, others with the more usual amount of water in the foreground.

Robert, you have given me just enough information to make me realise (and I only think this is right..) that the fixed scale on my lens going from 22 to zero and back to 22 again can be used to indicate DOF. I have never really looked closely at it before, always through it... And yes you can most definately suggest that I use that and I plan to do so... I do have a table of DOF for all my lens lengths, I did not realise this one has it 'built in'...

DON

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Don,
Agree with the assesments above. I like Jerry's take on it too.

[Don Railton]

Jerry
I forgot to add in my last post that I liked what you did. Thanks again. I have other photos of this scene with sea in the foreground I am about to post...

DON