I have continued to go to Ocean Beach, three miles away from my house in San Francisco, to walk and photograph the sunset. Since the middle of March there have been very few gloriously colored sunsets like the ones I was able to capture last winter, seen here: tonysicilianophotography.smugmug.com. But there was a fierce windstorm that created these rippled sand dunes that I was able to capture. This was taken with my Olympus OMD E-5, at 33mm, ISO 640, 1/250 sec, f/16.
Specific Feedback Requested
Any and all suggestions and critiques appreciated.
Hi Tony. I love the light hitting those ripples in the sand and the curving shadow of the edge on the right. It works really well having the brighter surf on the center right balancing that shadow of the beach on the left. I would maybe reduce the amount of sky in the image … possibly putting the horizon on the upper third horizontal … reinforcing the sand as the subject. Great image!
That wonderful sweeping curve with the sand dune draws me nicely into this lovely beach scene, Tony! The lighting in the image is lovely as is the action in the surf. and the blues in the cloud laden sky work well with the earth tones of the dunes. The ripples in the sand also make for another wonderful element here. Beautifully done.
Take away the water, and this dune looks like it is from Death Valley. Lack of a strong sense of scale perhaps creates an illusion that this dune is massive, I have no idea of its true size.
Great light and good processing, I love the contrast between blue and gold here. I also like the placement of the mountain at the end of the dune, it works really well. I agree with @Jon_Norris , a slight crop from the top helps tighten things up nicely.
This is really nice with the great sidelight, warm/cool colour contrast and the very strong leading line. I do however agree with the suggestion of cropping a bit of the sky off. I think it would make the image even stronger.
Hey Tony, I’m a little late to the party on this one, but I wanted to add how graphically strong this image is. I really like the four distinct zones of texture and colour. This could probably work well in black and white because of the strong textural detail but the combination of texture and colour really gives this tremendous impact. And yeah, while it works well as is, a little off the top does improve the balance.
