C&C on sunrise and a bird?

a1157814a · Dec 28, 2008

I realized taking pictures of sunrise at the coast is verrrrry hard. Very hard to work with contrast of the sky and the ocean, to satisfy both sides.

For the bird picture, I cropped out a bit using the rule of third

Ecas32 · Dec 28, 2008

the sunrise looks pretty good, the horizon is straight.

the bird is in great focus, i like the DOF, but maybe a tighter crop would work for this photo

a1157814a · Dec 28, 2008

Ecas32 said:
the sunrise looks pretty good, the horizon is straight.

the bird is in great focus, i like the DOF, but maybe a tighter crop would work for this photo

ideally, i would have done HDR for the sunrise picture, but i haven't yet to learn that.... but eventually. I have nikon d40 so i would have to do the bracketing manually, o well

a1157814a · Dec 28, 2008

a1157814a said:
ideally, i would have done HDR for the sunrise picture, but i haven't yet to learn that.... but eventually. I have nikon d40 so i would have to do the bracketing manually, o well

whoa, okay nvm i just learned it, it's not as bad as i thought it would be...
just that manual bracketing is kind of pain in the ass

a1157814a · Dec 28, 2008

C&C please?

ShutterSpeed · Dec 28, 2008

i think your sunrise picture is a few minutes too late...if it were just coming up over the horizon - it would be really great!

Allen459 · Dec 29, 2008

For the sunrise picture. Im not positive but im pretty sure that you might not be metering properly. See how its a little too dark on the rocks. So it seems that you metered the sky/sun which gave you a slower shutter speed which ended up darkening the rocks. One tip for that situation is to meter your hand since it is very close to middle gray or to carry around a gray card which would fill up your frame when metering to give you an accurate exposure. You can also purchase a light meter. Good work with the bird. Very well done.

revilo · Dec 29, 2008

In the first picture, it would be nice to see the whole curve that the rocks make; I don't know whether that's possible, but I think it would provide a nice leading line. Maybe use of a Gradient Neutral Density Filter would have helped, so that the sky and the rocks/water could be properly exposed? I do like this photo, though.

In the second photo, the unevenness of the lighting on the bird and the wooden railing is slightly annoying, but it's a great capture.
Well done, some nice pictures.

Captain IK · Dec 29, 2008

I realize birds aren't the most cooperative models, but it would have been better if the bird was willing to hang around long enough for the sun at his tail to reach his head.

a1157814a · Dec 29, 2008

Allen459 said:
For the sunrise picture. Im not positive but im pretty sure that you might not be metering properly. See how its a little too dark on the rocks. So it seems that you metered the sky/sun which gave you a slower shutter speed which ended up darkening the rocks. One tip for that situation is to meter your hand since it is very close to middle gray or to carry around a gray card which would fill up your frame when metering to give you an accurate exposure. You can also purchase a light meter. Good work with the bird. Very well done.

It was really difficult to get a decent shot of sunrise at that scene with what I had, to satisfy both the rocky part, sky, as well as not to make the sun's ray spreading to not overkill the sky. I mean, I don't even know if it is possible lol if it is, it's just hard.
There were two other professional photographer (I'm not one obviously) at the same scene, one of them used the HDR to work with the huge contrast between the sky and the rocks. The other one used this rectangular filter thing where he literally placed it infront of the lense. It's clear on bottom, fading into dark at about half way (to produce a vivid, detailed image at the rock parts, while not completely messing up the sky)