Flood Tide

[Austin Greene]

I was recently awarded a fellowship grant here at UC Davis to conduct some field research on an organism I've been studying/working on for about the past year. The grant will, among other things, cover the cost of my driving to the coast about every other weekend from now through April in order to collect my data. Needless to say, there will be plenty of photos taken during my periodic breaks :mrgreen: I've recently aquired a nifty graduated ND filter set, so I'm having quite a bit of fun experimenting with it.

Here's the first attempts, I had just finished a day of water sample collection, and sunset had all but passed, but got to take a few minutes to mess with a couple compositions. Second is my favorite, but I appreciate the "foggy" feel to the first.

Times like these I'm thankful that the University of paying for me to do my research here. I could never afford the gas otherwise.

1. Flow

Flow by TogaLive, on Flickr

2. Flood Tide

Flood Tide by TogaLive, on Flickr

Hope you enjoyed them! I'll of course post more over the coming trips.

 

[Derrel]

I prefer the wider angle of view of the second, horizontally composed one. To me, I often think of verticals in the 3:2 aspect ratio as representing, or tending toward representing, dynamism, action, strength, and so on, while I tend to think that horizontal compositions have more emphasis on steadiness, restfulness, and tranquility. For me, the lovely seastacks in the second photo work very,very well in that wider-angle, horizontal framing, and the inclusion of the beach REALLY makes the horizon and the cloud formation appear much more "in scale". To me, the second composition is successful, whereas the first one is "unrealized". What really seals the deal on the second shot is the deliberate inclusion of the headland in the distance on the right hand side....now THAT my man, makes the shot really come full-circle. The two seastacks that overlap the headland on the right reallllly add good depth clues.

 

[WesternGuy]

I'm with Darrel. I like the second one as it give more of the pattern shown by the clouds in the sky, because I think their pattern goes along way in making this image. My only "nit pick" is the placement of the horizon almost right in the middle of the image, but maybe in this case it isn't that bad as the sky is as important to the image as the beach is.

WesternGuy

 

[Austin Greene]

Thank you both for the kind words and thorough deconstruction, I really appreciate being able to hear how the image gets interpreted, it is a huge help. I'm definitely a fan of the second image over the first. Ironically, once I had set up the composition and started trying to time the frames with the waves, I really didn't give this one a second glance (since the waves were going out during the exposure). I thought to myself that what I wanted had to be with an incoming wave. Once I returned home and got to comparing images on the laptop, it was almost always the opposite. Most every image a liked involved a receding wave. WesternGuy, I can see how the horizon could spur a nit worth picking, I had a bit of tunnel vision for the rocks in my thought process.

Thanks again for the kind words, so happy you guys liked it! Makes me feel like I'm slowly but surely getting this landscape thing down :mrgreen:

 

[Braineack]

I think the right side of #2 needs to be brigthened a bit to even it out.