Shore Line

[midnitejam]

Rip it! Tell me what's wrong with it and how to fix it. Thanks

F-9
1/320
100 ISO
Adobe RGB

 

[phakimata]

I love the composition and colors, but you over did it a bit with the contrast.

 

[skieur]

The colour of the water is off and if you compare the white in the clouds, you will notice that the white caps on the water are NOT white.

Select the water in Photoshop and do a hue or colour change to blue water and white caps.

skieur

 

[Alpha]

The shutter speed is too fast.

The saturation is too high.

The background should not be that soft at infinity (a result of processing).

The trees look like they were extracted (basically cut and pasted into the photo).

 

[midnitejam]

The colour of the water is off and if you compare the white in the clouds, you will notice that the white caps on the water are NOT white.

Select the water in Photoshop and do a hue or colour change to blue water and white caps.

skieur

Thanks everyone, for the comments.

The waves kicking up sand near the shore made the water and whitecaps seem to be two-toned and muddy in some areas. The polarizer didn't really help either.

The over saturation and contrast is probably a bit much--I'm gonna start shying away from HDR for a spell to see if I can regain the purity of the images.

 

[lordson]

that photo looks a bit "fake"

i reckon the original would be more splendiferous

 

[nagoshua]

itd be nice to something interesting in the foreground other than the waves, im finding it looking a lil bit empty in the foreground.

 

[midnitejam]

that photo looks a bit "fake"

i reckon the original would be more splendiferous

DUH! It is fake. It's HDR.

So, can you tell me how to improve it? Composition? Not fuzzy enough? Bad lighting? Bad focus? I'm looking for suggestions for improvement.

 

[midnitejam]

itd be nice to something interesting in the foreground other than the waves, im finding it looking a lil bit empty in the foreground.

nagoshua, Thanks for your advice. Exactly the kind of comment I was hoping for.

 

[midnitejam]

The shutter speed is too fast.

The saturation is too high.

The background should not be that soft at infinity (a result of processing).

The trees look like they were extracted (basically cut and pasted into the photo).

Hello MaxBloom, Thanks for the tips.

enre: shutter speed......are you saying I should have used a slower shutter speed in order to dreamatize the water movement? Please tell me what effects to expect from different shutter speeds. Thanks

 

[Alpha]

Fast shutter speed (such as the case here) will freeze the motion of the water. This often makes it look very choppy. The problem can be solved in bright daylight by using an ND filter, generally two stops or darker.

 

[skieur]

Fast shutter speed (such as the case here) will freeze the motion of the water. This often makes it look very choppy. The problem can be solved in bright daylight by using an ND filter, generally two stops or darker.

If you don't have a ND filter, manually set the ISO at its lowest (50 on one of my cameras) and use a polarizer to reduce the light.

skieur

 

[newrmdmike]

try not shooting hdr if your processing makes it look like this. its way harsh, don't raise the saturation so much,

you can't take a not inspiring scene and process it to be as inspiring as an unprocessed inspiring one is naturally.
there is no interesting light here, wait for the right light.

there is nothing interesting to me compositionally, just a line across the middle. i know this is like beating a dead horse, but why not move the horizon up out of the center of the frame or lower in it?

 

[newrmdmike]

and i don't mean for that to be a mean critique

 

[newrmdmike]

instead of worrying so much about processing find the right thing to take a picture of, even if everything was spot on in this photo in terms of image quality, it still wouldn't be good in terms of subject matter.