La Jolla Cove at sunset...

Honu · May 23, 2009

Hi everyone,

These shots were taken at La Jolla cove in La Jolla near San Diego, CA. The sun was setting but was mostly obscured by clouds.

All images are 3-shot HDR/Tone-mapped in Photomatix, taken with Rebel XSI w/Sigma 10-20mm on a tripod. I darkened the sky a bit in PS Elements, along with general levels, contrast, saturation and sharpness adjustments. I also ran them through Noiseware to help with the HDR noise.

People like to scratch their names in the rocks, so I spent a lot of time cloning out graffiti like "Mary loves Jon" and "Chris 2005".

Feel free to let me know what you think, thanks as always for looking!

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Do'Urden's Eyes · May 25, 2009

In my opinion they all need a little work with the contrast. They're all very flat in tone.

Josh220 · May 25, 2009

I would have underexposed it by quite a bit, and slow down the shutter speed. It would have brought out the colors, and you may have gotten a nice movement effect with those waves coming over the rocks if you timed it right.

Still good shots though.

Josh220 · May 25, 2009

Maybe something a little more like this?

robertourso · May 25, 2009

beautiful, I loved La Jolla!

erick · May 25, 2009

I like them without so much contrast (it depends also on your screen)

the rocks are wonderful and the water is very transparent, nicely done

Mersad · May 26, 2009

I like your images too. Very good composition and atmosphere. :thumbup: I would only work on the contrast and colors a bit to breathe more life to the images, otherwise they are great shots. I tried a quick edit on one:

Josh220 · May 26, 2009

Also, you may want to try positioning the horizon somewhere other than the middle of the picture. Decide whether you want to show more sky, or more foreground, then compose the shot accordingly. It's slightly higher than the direct middle, but perhaps a tad higher next time.

Honu · May 26, 2009

Josh220 said:
Also, you may want to try positioning the horizon somewhere other than the middle of the picture. Decide whether you want to show more sky, or more foreground, then compose the shot accordingly. It's slightly higher than the direct middle, but perhaps a tad higher next time.

Hi,

It seems to me that most of the horizons are far from center - only one seems to me to be close to the center.

Honu · May 26, 2009

Josh220 said:
Maybe something a little more like this?

Maybe it's my monitor, but your edit seems to be extremely noisy and the rocks have a very over-saturated intense orange tone. Thanks for the input.

Honu · May 26, 2009

Mersad said:
I like your images too. Very good composition and atmosphere. :thumbup: I would only work on the contrast and colors a bit to breathe more life to the images, otherwise they are great shots. I tried a quick edit on one:

Thanks for the kind words - I'm going to play around a little with it. No offense but your edit seems to be a bit too much (at least on my montitor.)
I'm trying to capture how the scene really looked - the sky was completely grey and the rocks were more of a tan/grey tone.

Thanks again!

Honu · May 26, 2009

Do'Urden's Eyes said:
In my opinion they all need a little work with the contrast. They're all very flat in tone.

No redeeming qualities? Thanks!

Josh220 · May 26, 2009

Honu said:
Josh220 said:

Maybe something a little more like this?

Maybe it's my monitor, but your edit seems to be extremely noisy and the rocks have a very over-saturated intense orange tone. Thanks for the input.

Click to expand...

Yep, it was. I did it in under 1 minute before I ran out the door for work. I would need to spend more time on it and pinpoint specific locations in the picture to add contrast and saturate/desaturate, similar to Mersad did. I was just doing a quick edit to improve yours, but no it would not be a good final product.