Dolphin Splash!

[Indranil Sircar]

Earlier this year in September, I was out in Monterey Bay with Cheesmans Safari... it was a very windy day and rough seas. There wasn't too many pelagic birds either. We did come across a large school of common dolphins accompanying us for a while and it was an opportunity to get some images! This was one of the frames when one of them came out on the bow and splashed back into the water. For processing, I desaturated it a bit... applied Fract and changed opacity. This could have been a vertical crop... but wanted to see how you feel about this crop...

[Cheryl Slechta]

Indranil, I like the perspective, the darkened water and the fract. work. I'm not sure about the crop, I might crop from one of the sides so that it's less centered but picking a side would be tough. My first impression would be a crop from the bottom but that would make it centered x 2. Hopefully we'll get some different opinions

[Maureen Allen]

This is such a wonderful shot, Indranil! Love the light touch of fract too. I like the crop, but I think i'd tone down the 3 bright areas in the LLC.

[Dennis Bishop]

I like the colors and the Fractalius work. The blue works very well with the black and the almost silver color of the dolphin. My reaction to your cropping question was the same as Cheryl's, crop from one side. Because the right side is pretty much just black, I tried cropping from there and liked it. Then, I tried a vertical crop that nearly resulted in a square and liked that even better. It wasn't the intent, but it got rid of the bright spots that Maureen mentioned.

[Anita Bower]

Sounds like fun to see a school of Dolphis! Some good suggestions are made above. I'd like to see the Dolphin a bit sharper as it took me a while to figure out what I was looking at What do you think?