One of my first tries at B&W

[ntexascardfan]

Hello everyone.

I've recently decided to get into photography as a serious hobby. Attached is a photo I recently took at Canon Beach, Oregon of a man surfing.

The photo was originally a color shot, but I adjusted the settings in Lightroom 5.

What are your thoughts?

 

[ronlane]

Welcome to the site. For my tastes, the processing on this one has been pushed too much.

 

[dxqcanada]

I think that the rock in the background overwhelms the surfer.
If you didn't mention him, I wouldn't have noticed.

Contrast is too high.

 

[ntexascardfan]

Thank you for the feedback.

This trip was my first time getting out and taking a bunch of photos. I think if I could've done this one again I would've zoomed in a bit more (higher focal length?) and used a lower ISO setting. I get a lot of noise on this photo, when I zoom in on the rocks in lightroom they look hairy.

 

[ronlane]

Was this a really bright sunny day, with the picture taken mid-day with the sun overhead? The sky looks blown out and the rocks look like they could have been underexposed, which could explain the noise you are seeing in them.

 

[ntexascardfan]

This photo was taken at around 3pm on the Oregon Coast. So the sun was low in the sky behind the rocks. Ideally I would've been out to shoot in the morning when the sun would've been behind me, but our flight didn't land until noon and we made a beeline for the coast.

 

[ronlane]

Oh okay. Were the rocks behind the surfer really dark in the original color photo? I'm betting yes and that is because you didn't meter for the darkest area of the photo and the camera saw that bright sky and made it dark.

What program did you use to do the b&w conversion?

 

[ntexascardfan]

The temperature was bad in the original photo that resulted in a heavy blue tint over the entire picture. I think with more temp added to the picture the rocks come out pretty good in the original.

I'm using Lightroom 5.

 

[charlie76]

Well...I'm a fan if contrasty B&W so my favorite aspect of the shot is the rock cliff. It is definitely the main subject if the shot...the surfer is more of an afterthought...or an accessory, if you will. There are some compositional balance issues with this shot IMO. I could do away with the entire LHS personally. Just doing this real quick on my iPhone I'll try to illustrate my point. This quick crop gives the shot some more balance and yields a main subject....sorta. The white space on the LHS still blows it for me though...but love the rock-surfer combo. Just my $0.02