Breaker Bay, Wellington

[AlastairMoore]

Hi chaps,

Another from here down under. Breaker Bay is on the south coast of Wellington and about 10 minutes drive from my house. It must be a geologist's heaven as it's just all rocks, boulders and rock formations.

Anyway! How could this have been shot (and processed?) better?



What I have noticed in many of my shots is I'm probably trying to fit too much into the image and perhaps need to simplify.

[Dick Roadnight]

Hi chaps,

Another from here down under. Breaker Bay is on the south coast of Wellington and about 10 minutes drive from my house. It must be a geologist's heaven as it's just all rocks, boulders and rock formations.

Anyway! How could this have been shot (and processed?) better?

What I have noticed in many of my shots is I'm probably trying to fit too much into the image and perhaps need to simplify.

Composition OK - viewing point slightly to the left might have improved it, with continuity of water past the big rock, and looking more along the rut than across it.

Red or neutral grad to lighten up the rock.

DOF seems OK, but a view camera would have helped, and given you the option of a faster shutter speed.

A Longer lens would have made more of the distant rocks, and a much longer lens could produce a nice picture, mostly of the sea... Landscapes are not all about wide angles!

[wolfnowl]

You could ask ten people to critique your image and you'd get (at least) ten different answers.  To me this image lacks focus and tries to include too much which includes a lot extraneous stuff.  I'd probably do something like this...

(processed in Lightroom:  cropped, added two gradients, five brushes and pushed the sliders around a little)
Mike.

[fike]

nice crop.  It reveals that fact that the sky, while nice, is not enough to hold down so much real-estate at the top of the page.  You could consider compressing the sky with a content aware scaling, if you are into that sort of thing.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

You could ask ten people to critique your image and you'd get (at least) ten different answers...

True... so here is mine, a bit of a primordial feel:

[wolfnowl]

Nicely done!

Mike.

[GlennMorimoto]

Mike, nice edit on "Breaker Bay, Wellington.

[RSL]

I think Slobodan's B&W is the right approach. The color in the original detracts from the shapes, which are the guts of the thing. But, for a landscape, it's a fine shot, Alastair.

[popnfresh]

I agree that it works better in B&W. And Slobodan's conversion really put some drama into that wimpy sky.

[AlastairMoore]

Thank you all for your comments, very much appreciated and I'm going to try and learn from you guys! And Slobodan, your B+W conversion is cracking! Love what you've done with it.

Cheers again!

Alastair

[EduPerez]

Amazing conversion, Slobodan.

[marcocarmassi]

Hi Alastair,
the composition is quite good but, in my opinion, it's important to make some character to come out.
I put my attention on sky colors and their reflection on the rocks below. Besides, i rendered the sea close to the rocks a bit more blue and i added a little sharpness overall.
I also deleted a sensor stain in the middle of the sky  Now it works better for me.

[RSL]

Marco reminds me of a friend of mine who sells prints at "art fairs." One year when I looked at his stuff in a local fair I suggested maybe he was boosting his color saturation a bit high. He was a little shamefaced as he admittted it, then added: "But my sales have doubled." Evidently nothing sells better than colors that look like a Marlboro ad.

[popnfresh]

Marco, I think yours is the best color rendition of this shot, but I still have to go with Slobodan's B&W conversion. It's just not a scene that works well in color, imo.

[Peter_DL]

Marco reminds me of a friend of mine who sells prints at "art fairs." One year when I looked at his stuff in a local fair I suggested maybe he was boosting his color saturation a bit high. He was a little shamefaced as he admittted it, then added: "But my sales have doubled." Evidently nothing sells better than colors that look like a Marlboro ad.

Yes, however there seems to a technical aspect involved as well:
the usual S-curve which is applied in the course of Raw conversions will 'always' increase saturation in the shadows while reducing it for the highlights. So when we just increase global saturation, the rocks soon look like Marlboro country while the sky could stand more of such move.

So the quick edit I did (actually already yesterday) was a Hue/Sat.-layer with a bit of +Saturation shining through an inverted Luminosity Mask - which also recovers and emphasizes the color contrast between the blue sky, its reflection in the water vs. the warm rocks and clouds. Maybe in between the original and Marco's version.

Peter

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[RSL]

Peter, That's a definite improvement but I still think the shapes and tones in the picture are a lot more important than the colors. To me it looks like a natural for B&W. Evidently Slobodan agrees with me. Here's another way to look at it, though this wouldn't sell as well as Marco's version. But, in the end, I still like Slobodan's conversion best.

[Peter_DL]

Peter, That's a definite improvement but I still think the shapes and tones in the picture are a lot more important than the colors. To me it looks like a natural for B&W.

Russ, - maybe it is just the ongoing foggy winter which is expected to last long this year, here in central Europe close to the Alps. So we are tempted to be desirous of seeing warm colors at the blue sea…

Regards, Peter

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[RSL]

Peter, Well, there are plenty of them on this thread. Enjoy. No wonder Marlboro sold so many cigarettes.