that darn tide

afoto · Jan 20, 2013

I headed out to my new favourite shooting spot, iona beach. Its a fun area with lots of reeds, rocks, and a nice walkway that goes 8 km out into the ocean.
sadly, when the tide is out, the beach is kind of gross and muddy and doesn't make for very nice photographing.

The sky this night was amazing, and i'm satisfied with the photo, but i'm not sure if the mucky foreground takes away from it?
also, the i had a fair amount of natural vignetting from the graduated filters i was using, i'm ok with a little bit of dark around the edges, but is it to much?
thoughts? c&c welcome.

lee big stopper
0.9 soft grad
0.6 soft grad
124 seconds

iona beach by abbye dahl, on Flickr

EmmaBproductions · Jan 20, 2013

That photo is phenominal!

You could try to edit it out, but i'd watch out if I were you

deeky · Jan 20, 2013

I like the vignetting on it. When you list .9 and .6 soft grad, what is that referring to? If it is just a .9 and .6 stop filters, why stack them? I'm assuming there is more there that I just don't get yet.

Mully · Jan 20, 2013

The mirky foreground gives it realism ....very nice shot, incredible sky.

MiFleur · Jan 20, 2013

Wow this is so beautiful and I think that the foreground is good. A truly excellent capture!

afoto · Jan 20, 2013

deeky said:
I like the vignetting on it. When you list .9 and .6 soft grad, what is that referring to? If it is just a .9 and .6 stop filters, why stack them? I'm assuming there is more there that I just don't get yet.

Hi deeky,

the filters a lee graduated neutral density filters. in a situation like this where the sky is much brighter then the foreground, you can put neutral density filters over the sky so it doesn't blow out. In this case i stacked the two to get a total of 5 stops neutral density on the sky. that way it didn't blow out where the sun was setting, but it did cause some vignetting on the edges of the sky.

thanks everyone else for the thoughts! i'll leave the foreground as is