Sunset Table Bay

[Dudley Watson]

This image was captured from Bloubergbeach Cape Town. The image was processed in CS6 by blending two exposures and then in Nik Colour Efex.
The camera settings and info is as follows
Nikon D3S
F2.8 14-24 set at 19mm
F11
Iso 200
S/S 1/4 sec
Tripod and remote

[Morkel Erasmus]

It's a lovely sunset from an iconic spot, Dudley.
The overall balance of the exposure/blending looks decent, though it does feel like you lightened the shadows too much with the way the rocks and beach appear (grainy and muddy in the midtones). I would try and darken it overall by about 1/3 stop and see if it makes a difference? Maybe the Nik filters were overcooked...

There seems to be some grain/noise in the sky - which shouldn't be apparent with the camera and settings you used? Perhaps it's pixelation from your sharpening/downsizing workflow.
Compositionally I would have perhaps liked Table Mountain to be somewhat off-centre in the gap between the LHS rocks, not sure if you tried moving a bit to your RHS for a different view?

Happy New Year and I do hope we'll see more of your work and your feedback on others' images here in Landscapes (and perhaps in Wildlife) in 2014

[Andrew Merwin]

Beautiful image. I really like the waves breaking over the rocks & the ship is a nice touch. TFS.

[David Stephens]

Thanks to the breaking wave on the left, I'm happy with Table Mountain being near centered. I do agree that you may have lifted shadows a bit too much on the FG rocks, or maybe you're fighting some flare there. I think that I see lots of noise in the FG, large rock.

Still, stunning overall.

[Andrew McLachlan]

Hi Dudley, with a few tweaks as mentioned by Morkel this one will work. I do agree with Morkel on the comp...a step or two to the left and a slight swing of the camera to the right would put Table Rock in the upper left position and keep the lovely foreground rocks. Looking forward to seeing more of your landscape work here!

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Dudley,

very nice image and I as well agree with Morkel with this one. Looking forward to a RP of this one. I like it very much

Ciao
Anette

[Dudley Watson]

Happy New Year to all of you and thank you for your critique of my image.

My original composition for this sunset had the mountain on LHS and I will post this composition in the next few days. I then decided to try a panorama of this scene and this image came from this series of images. I was originally drawn to the image by the wave breaking on LHS rock. I could have moved slightly to the RHS as you suggested Morkel but the front rock may have blocked the detail which had caught my eye.

On the post processing I have reduced the shadow adjustment in ACR, excluded any detail extractor adjustment in Nik and darkened the light area of the front rocks with a dodge layer. The reprocessed image is attached for your comments.

[David Stephens]

That's a nice improvement, IMO.

[Don Lacy]

Hi Dudley the second image is a big improvement, the tonalities look much more natural I would also suggest darken the bright area in the right hand side of the frame just a tad.

[Anette Mossbacher]

Hi Dudley, I as well like your RP much better

Ciao
Anette

[Dudley Watson]

Thanks Anette, David and Don for your valuable feedback on my repost.