Lack of sleep + Nice Coast C&C Please!

Lraccomando · Jun 21, 2010

All Photos taken with Nikon L100

tirediron · Jun 21, 2010

C&C per req:

These are nice scenes, but dynamic range makes really good exposures very difficult indeed. You go right from Zone 1 to 10, which means that there's going to be some sacrifice no matter what.

1. I'm afraid this is just the wrong place to shoot from at this time of day. You have a large black area image left competeing iwth a much brigher area to the right. What might have worked better would be a tight crop on the lighthouse, metering the brighter areas of the sky to render the lighthouse itself in silhouette.

2. I like the tranquility of the scene, but once again, exposure is problematic. Here there are a couple of choices. Use a graduated neutral density filter(G-ND) to reduce the dynamic range, shoot for an HDR or again, crop more tightly on the birds.

3. This scene begs for the use of either G-NDs to enhance the sky, or shoot as an HDR. Composition-wise, I would be temped to omit the rocks and bird in the foreground and concentrate on the clouds and water in the background. Don't forget to level your images!

Just my $00.02 worth - your mileage may vary.
~John

Lraccomando · Jun 21, 2010

Thanks John!

Very helpful, looks like I need a GND..

SethAlbritton · Jun 21, 2010

Your photos have the potential to be very great as far as content. My advice to you is to get get photoshop then go lynda.com and learn how to use it.

I messed around with one of the photos to show you what can be done.I got carried away and way over did it. I'm in no way an expert at editing. I've been at it for three months. Also, I'm on my lap top at work the screen is not correct color. So here is just what I did with.

GET PHOTOSHOP!

nchips1 · Jun 21, 2010

SethAlbritton said:

This... is... I don't even know if there's a word for how oversaturated this is.

Regardless, the only thing that really needs fixing (I'm really not the best to give editing advice) but I think the sky could use some different exposure, contrast, and it could use some dodging.