Just before sunrise! Vietnam!

[Darrenf]

Hey All,

Took this shot in Vietnam:

 

[binga63]

nice shot...... peaceful

 

[FanBoy]

Might have been better to get down a bit lower to capture the water/boat reflection, if possible.

 

[Majeed Badizadegan]

It's a very cool shot. I'd suggest .5 to 1.5 stops increase in overall exposure. On my laptop at work, I can barely see any detail in the boats unless I tilt the screen. It looks like some shadow areas of the boat are underexposed to the point where there is no information.

My main complaint for this image would be exposure, but I like the composition choices.

 

[Darrenf]

Thanks for the comments.

Here are my thoughts:

FanBoy: I shot the scene at multiple angles. I found that going at a lower angle caused the boats to block the land behind. I felt that I needed to see the land to add depth to the image.
Rotanimod: Thanks. Yeah, it was a dilemma I had. Brightening it up allowed me to see more details of the boat but it blew out the sky slightly. After much thought, I went with this because I felt that it was more true to the scene. It was before sunrise after all. I think if I wanted to get both the details of the boat and sky, I would have to take a HDR approach.

 

[spicyTuna]

Maybe try a soft grad to keep the sky nice and dark and lighten up the foreground.

You might be able to blend it using two raws. One exposed for the sky and one pushed a couple of stops for the foreground. Then use layers in PS to blend the two together.

 

[Darrenf]

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried it but I still prefer the silhouette look.