California Road Trip C+C

[burstintoflame81]

My wife and I recently took a road trip up the coast of California and then inland to Tahoe and Yosemite. Here are a few of the pics that I got during the trip. I have been going nuts trying to figure out how to get these onto Flickr without degrading them too badly, hopefully this post works.

1

A Pier off of Route 1. EDIT - I think I should have looked at this one better prior to posting, It definately needs the white adjusted, seems to be blown out in the center of the cloud.

2

Ventura Beach wave shot.

3

Golden Gate Bridge

4

Experimental shot in Yosemite Park

5

Yosemite Valley

 

[Tommy_Boy]

Hey burstintoflame81,

1.) This photo would've been good, if not for the white blur. It's way too bright

2.) I like the idea, but You should cut off the top of the photo, because it's a bit distracting. And the picture itself is hmmm a bit still, while it should be a bit more dynamic. I know that it's very hard taking pictures of dynamic phenomenons, but practice makes perfect

3.) I think that a landscape photo would've been better. If You captured the entire GGB, it would've been a nice picture. You should try and play around with levels and curves in Photoshop[ or any other graphic program ] to get some color depth.

4.) I like the perspective, but black is too black You can't see the trees' details; the bottom right corner is nothing else than a big, black blot. Once again I suggest You use Photoshop

5.) This one I like the most. The line of the clouds give it an extra touch.

This is my opinion, I'm no pro photographer, so You should wait for comments from more experienced photographers

Cheers,
Tommy_Boy

 

[WimFoto]

1 crop in so just the pier is visible.
2 the wave is great, but i agree, cut the top. good exposure on this one
3 keep horizon high or low, in the middle is a little boring in this shot
4 i would like to see in color, could you post that?
5 more contrast in the sky, a warming filter, try a small amount of saturation on the rocks and and a few select trees. it looks like midday light, late afternoon light would have been nice.

i hope this helps.

 

[Bitter Jeweler]

Mid day light? It looks like nice soft overcast light, because there are no harsh shadows.
Kinda tough recommending a time of day for this shot, because we don't know the direction of the sun.

 

[burstintoflame81]

It was mid day, but it was overcast. Weather sucked on the whole trip. All fog and clouds. Thats why you can see the mist on the pier picture. That was the clearest it got. You can see how cloudy it is in the Golden Gate pic. I had to really mess with that one to really get any color in it at all. It was all dreary.

#1 I will have to adjust the white a little, but wanted to leave the top in so that you can see the fog rolling into the shore. Also if you crop low to the pier it ends up being an odd wide angle pic and I think it tends to look worse that way. ( because I want to keep the long angle of the pier to give the perspective of its size.


I will try to crop #2 more when I get a change

#4 was almost all silhouette ( spelling ) and the sky was very gray, so I adjusted that a little and realized that you couldn't see enough of the trees details and that it would be better to just go for the approach of making it a nice contrast silhouette pic.

Thanks for all of the critiques guys.