During a walk on a beach at the south coast of Sweden, situated close to my weekend cottage, I saw this stone together with the lines in the sand. I have neither placed the stone nor drawn the lines!
Any comments are welcome!
I decided for a short DOF, does that work?
I found it difficult to deal with the sand grain/texture. I used contrast, structure and tonality to end up with the image as is. How could it be improved?
Is this a composite: No
Wonderful, Ola. Just yesterday I was also walking on a beach here and got a photo of a single black rock on the beach, perhaps I’ll be able to post it later this week. I do love the wonder curve line that ends at the rock. For me, the detail/texture in the rock and the sand are very nice . It is only as I go back in the image does it loose detail, but that is ok for me. Just curious, what were your settings for this shot? Very nicely done.
Great capture, Ola! All the different kinds of art in nature including abstract!
Ola: A really nice find and a very successful image IMO. I like the play of light and shadow and the texture that you did capture in the sand as well as your DOF/POF choice. Well done. >=))>
I really like this. The lines and the contrast are excellent. There is some weird…banding? going on with the focus though. It falls off behind the rock, but there are bits where the sand is sharper. Strange. Could be from over exposure and compensation, but I don’t know. Is it a stacked image?
@Vanessa_Hill, @Kris_Smith, @Bill_Fach and @linda_mellor thanks for your kind comments.
Kristen, thanks for pointing this out. During my 2.5 years as a hobby photographer I have not yet by far learned to master the “craftmanship” of photography (will we ever?). I think that that is the explanation! When I down-loaded the image I found out that the background where somewhere inbetween acceptable sharp and pleasently blurred - the worst outcome! Since I liked the composition very much I decided to try to save the image by increasing the BG blur during the post-processing. What you noted is probably some artefacts from that work. I will start-over and try to come up with an image with better quality:)
Post processing is an art unto itself and I still stumble around trying to do good work. I shot film for longer (at this point) than I have digital, so the learning never stops. Your vision and instinct for what makes a good image is spot on - don’t be discouraged, keep on shooting and sharing.
Ola, I am coming to the party late. I really like your vision here. The shapes and textures make this shot. I too am really having to deal with the learning curve of post processing. I came from the film era, and so having to learn what the software allows us to do, and then how to do it, as my hair is turning gray, is a bit of a challenge for me. 
We are all on a photography journey and all at different levels. The low position you shot this, really makes the shot, and the line behind it makes it look like the rock moved, but most likely it was the sand being pulled by the current of the water.
I really love this Ola. This was really well seen. Your shallow depth of field is excellent. Terrific foreground sharpness with a very nice falloff to the background. IMO it would not have been anywhere near as nice an image if you had stopped down to try and sharpen everything. This has a nice minimalist feel to it with just enough shadow to give the trail some definition and your composition is terrific Your choice to go B&W was a good one too. One very small nit is the dark splotch half way up the left side of the image very close to the edge of the frame. Also, there is a sharp section of sand just to the right and up slightly from that dark splotch that is kind of weird. Was this a focus stack? Anyway, you might want to blur that little section of sand as it sticks out particularly when you view this image large. All that said, this is really beautiful Ola!
Really good eye Ola. I like your presentation B/W works well as does the dof. In particular I like how you got to a nice angle to get shadows out lining the track the rock moved on.
This works really well. Such a simple scene and rendered quite effectively. The shallow DOF works and I quite like this. Well seen and presented.
@Shirley_Freeman, @David_Haynes, @David_Leroy and @Harley_Goldman thanks for your kind comments.
Thanks for your advise on improvments. I will remove the splotch. No focus stack. The weird part has been created during the post-processing. I will try to get rid of these parts.
I’m late to the conversation Ola, but do really love this shot. This is just great.
I see the artifacts and suspected it was post-work. I’d be interested in seeing the native shot without the post-work blurring.
Also, I do think it would be very successful with the blurring you describe, if able to be accomplished without the artifacts. I think negative clarity/texture (in Lr if you’re using that) can only get us so far without introducing artifacts. I’ve had better luck with Lens Blur in Ps, yet may need to run it through this filter 2-3 times to get desired effect.
Regardless, this is definitely a great shot that I’d be proud to have in my portfolio. Love the B&W!
Ola, this is very well seen. The smoothness of the stone and the swerve of the shadow behind create a fine story about the motion. I’m not sure what your photo processing software is, but in photoshop, you can duplicate the image layer, do a gaussian blur on everything and then mask (or unmask) to apply the blur to particular parts of the image.
@Mark_Seaver and @Jim_McGovern thanks for your kind comments and post-processing advise. I will for sure try them out!
