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Thread: Beach Stone

  1. #1
    Brendan Dozier
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    Default Beach Stone

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    Took this the other morning, while trying for low angle shots of some fast scampering shore birds. Liked how the light hit this smooth, wet beach stone and curving lines of the strand of seaweed. Rotated, cropped bottom half off, added some canvas on lft. CS5, some touch-up on seaweed & sand, added some blur to horizon and sat to sky.

    7D, EF70-200mm f/2.8L IS II USM +2.0x, HH
    1/2000
    5.6
    ISO 800

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    BPN Viewer Dave Leroy's Avatar
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    Neat photograph Brendan and I like it. It is nice and clean. Just enough of an oof fg for me, and I like how the rock also points toward the disappearing seaweed. I was puzzled a bit by the cool light and camera settings. I am guessing a light overcast day. I am fine with the cool look and photo may also look very nice a bit warmer. Your vision.

  3. #3
    Brendan Dozier
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    Thanks very much, Dave. You're right, it was a partly overcast early morning. I removed most of the blue cast from the sand and stone using selective desaturation, then experimented with color balance a bit. Tried both warm and cool, but liked how the stone and sand looked a little more on the blue (cool) side. The sky was a duller blue, so gave it a little punch. I'm not surpised you are puzzled by the settings, because stones and seaweed are usually not fast movers and don't require a 1/2000 shutter speed! Was in-between shooting shorebirds darting around the beach, and didn't change my settings so it was a little underexposed.

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    There's a lot I like about this, Brendan. The composition is great. Especially where the horizon and the in-focus elements of the foreground fall with respect to the horizontal divine proportion lines. Nice job adding canvas, and the long, narrow format works very well for this image. I like whatever it is that's beyond the seaweed (more seaweed, perhaps?) fading into the background, but I wish the most forward part of it was at a different angle. I think that would do two things. The focus transition would be more gradual, and the curve from the top of it down to the sand would be revealed. Not a big deal, however.

    I agree with Dave's comment about the cool tones. Just to see what would happen, I pulled the image into Photoshop, applied an 85 warming filter adjustment layer, and masked if off the stone. While it changes the blue in the sky, it adds a brownish tone to the sand and provides some nice color contrast, especially with the original blue of the stone remaining.

  5. #5
    Brendan Dozier
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    Thanks, Dennis, and I like the concept of what you did in the repost. The stone pops nicely. I know you just did this quickly, and I think with a little more fine tweaking this is another good solution. I think the underexposure added to the coolness of image and influenced my decision to go more towards cool tones.

    btw Dennis, thanks to you, I'm exploring more about devine proportions. Really great stuff for improving your compositions. Geometry was my absolute favorite math class in school, and I had forgotton all of this stuff regarding Keppler. http://www.keplersdiscovery.com/DivineProportion.html Amazing looking at the geometry of nature, have you ever looked into fractal geometry and the Mandelbrot set? Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G6uO...eature=related

  6. #6
    Julie Kenward
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    Brendan, Brendan, Brendan! What a beauty! I, too, think a slightly higher angle (just a touch) might have given that front edge of the frame a little more DOF and that would have been nice but...wow, is this a cool image! Love your choice of crop and the composition of the trailing seaweed going out into infinity. The blues take it over the top for me.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Brendan Dozier View Post
    . . have you ever looked into fractal geometry and the Mandelbrot set? Check this out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9G6uO...eature=related
    Since I first saw something about them, fractals have fascinated me. Not too many years ago . . . Well, maybe it was too many years ago, a co-worker who knew a lot more about them than I would dazzle me with some things he found. Thanks very much for that YouTube link. Wow.

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    Hey Brendan, I love the original and wouldn't change a thing! The wet stone with the seaweed leading off into the BG makes a great comp and the cool tones fit the subject perfectly. I look at it and think of a cold winter morning at the beach. When I lived in SoCal, that meant I was surf fishing so this brings back some very pleasant memories. Very well done!

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    BPN Member Steve Maxson's Avatar
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    Hi Brendan. I really like "mini-landscape" images like this. The color tones and comp of the OP work perfectly for me. The first thing I thought when I saw this image is that this would be an ideal situation for a 90 mm tilt/shift lens (few people seem to have this lens, but I love mine) which would give you foreground to background sharpness. The extended DOF would be my preference for this type of image, though others clearly like the shallow depth - so I guess it's just a matter of taste. This is very well done!

  10. #10
    Brendan Dozier
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    Thanks Ken & Steve.

    Ken, it was a bit chilly, but a great So Cal morning at the beach. I had been out there ealier for the lunar ecplipse, but I think this is actually one of my favorites from that morning.
    Steve, that is a good tip regarding the tilt shift lens, I'm not sure if Canon makes one of those, have to look into that, as well as the flash you recommend for maco studio.

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    BPN Member Steve Maxson's Avatar
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    QUOTE=Brendan Dozier;751979]Thanks Ken & Steve.

    Steve, that is a good tip regarding the tilt shift lens, I'm not sure if Canon makes one of those, have to look into that, as well as the flash you recommend for maco studio.[/QUOTE]

    Brendan - Canon makes the TS-E 90 mm f/2.8 tilt/shift lens - definitely not cheap, but currently on sale at B&H. (I got mine back when they were only about $900.)

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    Quote Originally Posted by Steve Maxson View Post
    The first thing I thought when I saw this image is that this would be an ideal situation for a 90 mm tilt/shift lens (few people seem to have this lens, but I love mine) which would give you foreground to background sharpness.
    I thought that tilt-shift lenses did the opposite....give you a limited area in focus. Am I missing something?

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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken Childs View Post
    I thought that tilt-shift lenses did the opposite....give you a limited area in focus. Am I missing something?
    Ken, I'm in no way an expert. I don't own a tilt-shift lens, but I'd like to, and I've done a lot of reading about them. Depending on how they're adjusted, I believe the user can produce either effect. Here's my understanding. It's a matter of the orientation of the plane of the lens with respect to whatever you're shooting. If they're parallel, you effectively have great depth of field. If not, you get what the Lensbaby is sold to do. I think most people regard the ability of the tilt-shift lens to bring a region that would otherwise defy the ability of a normal lens into focus as its reason for being. However, one should just as easily be able to otherwise affect what's in focus. (I don't have a Lensbaby, either, so I don't know which has greater potential in that regard.)

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    Thanks, Dennis.
    Most examples I find of supposedly good tilt-shift photography show something with a limited area in focus, giving the impression that you are looking at a small model. I guess I need to do more reading instead of looking.

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    BPN Member Steve Maxson's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Ken Childs View Post
    Thanks, Dennis.
    Most examples I find of supposedly good tilt-shift photography show something with a limited area in focus, giving the impression that you are looking at a small model. I guess I need to do more reading instead of looking.
    Ken - Dennis has pretty well explained things - a tilt/shift could be used to either maximize or minimize (or selectively place) the DOF. I typically use mine to increase depth. Here is an example from a couple years ago: http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ing-for-a-Gull

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