Church Bay Beach - Your thoughts?

Polyphony · Aug 17, 2010

I arrived at this location not knowing which direction the beach was facing. (Looked at a list of beaches in Bermuda, picked this one, got on the bus.) It turns out the sun was setting on the complete opposite side of land. This made for terrible lighting conditions as you can see from the original photo.

I took this shot along with several other bracketed exposures in hopes of making an HDR. This is just one RAW capture which I (attempted to) edit into a somewhat decent image.

Tell me what you think of the edit and also of the image itself. I actually was thinking about composition this time but I had very few options of where to set up the tripod. This location was therefore the best compromise. How did I do? Thanks for looking.

EDIT:

ORIGINAL:

DanFinePhotography · Aug 17, 2010

simply put : I Love it(the edited version), breathtaking view very good PP.

Polyphony · Aug 17, 2010

DanFinePhotography said:
simply put : I Love it(the edited version), breathtaking view very good PP.

Thanks.

Anymore input is both requested and appreciated

clanthar · Aug 17, 2010

Hi,

You said the lighting was terrible -- that's an understatement.

You can't do HDR with a moving subject so you're left with a single capture. That's more tonality than a single capture can handle, so your highlights are blown and the foreground is underexposed. It's classic backlight.

You need more contrast in the foreground and you need to remove the blue color cast.

Joe

Polyphony · Aug 17, 2010

clanthar said:
Hi,

You said the lighting was terrible -- that's an understatement.

You can't do HDR with a moving subject so you're left with a single capture. That's more tonality than a single capture can handle, so your highlights are blown and the foreground is underexposed. It's classic backlight.

You need more contrast in the foreground and you need to remove the blue color cast.

Joe

Doh! I knew something was wrong. I forgot to edit WB. I spent 10 mins playing with hue and saturation sliders trying to get the blue out of it. Usually WB is the first thing I look at/correct. Oh well.

How is this? I still can't seem to get the blue cast out of the rocks. What did you do to it? P.S. Looking at mine and yours side by side, I still need more contrast...hmmmm. I also added a ND filter in the sky and brought out the orange because I like the color. Your edit looks almost exactly like I saw it (which is awesome). My edit is leaning towards what I wanted to see haha. What do you think? Am I overdoing it?

clanthar · Aug 17, 2010

Hi,

You're using Lightroom. Lightroom is a database and RAW file processor. It is not a photo editor; GIMP is better than Lightroom in that capacity. Lightroom is fine to use, but in the end you need more.

I loaded your photo into Photoshop. I used Photoshop's blending modes to raise the contrast and adjust the tone in the foreground. I did this locally by painting in the changes. I then switched to Lab mode and manually adjusted the color channels till I got what I wanted in the clouds and beach -- WB. The rocks were still blue and the sky color was off. so I used both Selective Color and Hue/Saturation to adjust them individually.

Bottom line: no matter what you do the highlights stay blown -- fatal flaw.

Take Care,
Joe

Polyphony · Aug 17, 2010

clanthar said:
Hi,

You're using Lightroom. Lightroom is a database and RAW file processor. It is not a photo editor; GIMP is better than Lightroom in that capacity. Lightroom is fine to use, but in the end you need more.

I loaded your photo into Photoshop. I used Photoshop's blending modes to raise the contrast and adjust the tone in the foreground. I did this locally by painting in the changes. I then switched to Lab mode and manually adjusted the color channels till I got what I wanted in the clouds and beach -- WB. The rocks were still blue and the sky color was off. so I used both Selective Color and Hue/Saturation to adjust them individually.

Bottom line: no matter what you do the highlights stay blown -- fatal flaw.

Take Care,
Joe

I use Lightroom and Photoshop but sometimes (like in this case) I get hung up in Lightroom. Thank you very much for the edit and your comments. I've learned a lot from them even if it doesn't look I have just yet :mrgreen: