One from the mighty Oregon coast. We have much simpler sea stack formations here in Southern California, so usually, my composition consists of a single rock. It was nice playing with different situations.
PS. And one of these days, I will have the inspiration to write a haiku
Tech specs:
Four images blended to smoothen some water in the MG and fill up gaps in the FG
Nikon D750, 17mm, f/16, ISO 50, 1.6s exposures.
Brought up the warmer hues on the main sea stack as suggested below, fixed some alignment issue when blending waves, and some minor burning on the distant rock.
Very nice, the shape of the main seastack flows nicely with the water patterns. If anything, I might suggest dodging the white part of the water in the fore/midground to emphasize it more.
You had a tempestuous sky to go along with your pillar. Lucky you. They do go well together. This isnāt Bannon, Oregon is it? The blue cast applied globally adds to the mood. The funnel shaped light in the sky works well also. Are there any warm hues in those rocks at all? If so then it might be a good idea to bring them out a bit.
This might also work as a b&w conversion where you could tease greater contrast out of those rocks. Even the sky could look even more dramatic. Donāt know how you would feel about that.
Adhika, this is absolutely gorgeous. The composition is beautiful, drawing my eye in and giving the picture enormous depth. I also love your choice of essentially split-toning accentuating the warmer reds in the rock and the cooler blues in the water and the sky. I think your choice not to hit the white point is a good one that gives the image a feel of toning. The softness of the water and sky juxtaposed to the grittiness of the rock works beautifully without being in the least jarring. Wonderful and moody.
You mean Bandon? If so, yes it is. A very wonderful place, Igor. I remember you are in OR, too. How far are you from this place?
Thanks, Dan. Indeed, I only wish that I live closer!
Brent, I assume you are talking about the ācurlā between the rocks in the FG right in the center. My concern with that is that it will become very close in tonality with the sky and that is a little āoffā, if you know what I mean. But let me play with it a little.
Igor, I was lucky indeed. Not often things come along like this. I remembered shooting the day before at sunset and the tide was not right. This was the sunrise right after that.
This is a very interesting thought. I am intrigued. Let me experiment with this.
When the color didnāt turn out at sunrise, my thinking was to convert this into B&W right away and I did toy with it a little but the blue here seems to bring out so much more emotion?
Ah, thanks, Kerry. Recently I have been rethinking my approach to image contrast. I have gravitated towards lower contrast images for a while and I have got some comments (not here) that mentioned that the images could use a little more pop. Thanks for confirming that the lower contrast here turns out okay.
Adhika, wonderful image. This is so primeval looking, with powerful forces of nature at work. The blue tones in the sky and water are gorgeous. I agree with @Igor_Doncov that it might be worth playing with some very subtle warming of the parts of the near rocks that are already receiving some light. Emphasis on subtleā¦
Iām a little surprised by your comment, I would not necessarily think of this image as being low contrast. Yes the whites in the water are lower luminosity than the sky highlights. But you have some deep darks, and bright highlights in the sky. What would you consider to be a high contrast rendering of this scene? Maybe Iām getting hung up on semantics ? Just curious on how you define low contrast, not disagreeing with your view.
Adhika, you have received a lot of detailed input above. I do not have the knowledge/experience to add to that, I just want to say that the image is gorgeous. The composition, how you have blended the images to end up with the water, the sky, the color scheme etc., a perfect combination of what is given by nature and your skills.
Ed, I need to tinker a little bit to get a high contrast rendering for this in color. But when I dabbled in the B&W version of this, this was the result. So, maybe something with more definition on the waves, and skyā¦
Adhika, I see what you mean about contrast, itās the lack of bright highlights except in the sky. That B&W rendition is stunning in its own right. But Iād experiment with slightly darkening the darker tones in the sky a bit more , i think the B&W has more to give in the sky.
Sorry so late to the dialogue Adhikaā¦Iāve been sitting on this one for a day or so. I do really like the graphic nature of the image and enjoy the swirl of the foreground arc, the curve of which contrasts nicely with the triangular shape of the primary seastack. The vignette in the sky works well to keep the eye in the frame.
I canāt put my finger on it, but something about the (brightness of the shade of ???) blue seems a bit incongruous for the somber nature of the image. As I view the B&W, I prefer this much better and believe it addresses the experience I had in viewing the image.
I dunno - I think you know by now I probably overthink this stuff a bit!
Moody and mysterious! This is wonderful Adhika. The sky is dripping with drama and I particularly like the graceful sweep of the water as it flows in and around the rock formations. This almost looks like it could be a scene out of Jurassic Park. While I love the color version I think this could also work as a B&W. I hope you do not mind, but here is a B&W version of this wonderful scene.
This is beautiful! I really like the moodiness of the blue twilight tones. I also like the constrasting textures between the sea stacks and the flow of the water. That swirl in the foreground water makes a great foreground element too. Very nice all the way around!
The B&W is certainly appealing and like Igor has said above, itās very hard to go wrong with this B&W. I need to work on the B&W a little more but I do think that there is a place for both interpretation.
@Igor_Doncov and @Ed_McGuirk, I played with that idea of bringing up the warmer tones in the main sea stack and I really like how it turns out. Thanks for this idea! I have updated the original post with the revision. Additionally, I found a misalignment on the layers when I blended in the wave. I have fixed that in the revision.
Adhika, the subtle warming in the rework does the trick for me. And I would be really curious to see where you end up with the sky in the B&W. Both are fine images.
The rework is good, that was a nice subtle idea. You know youāve got a good image where you have many different ways you can take it! The hard part is picking one, of course, because it forces you to reflect on what your artistic vision is.
Awesome image Adhika; I love both the color and BW, and would keep both if twas mine. Itās fun to see so many comments on an already great image; some images just have a lot of potential to be taken any many different directions.
Of all the version posted, I prefer your color rendition. Has a lot more mood to it. I think this is a very strong image. For a suggestion, Iād recommend playing around with Photoshop new āDepth Aware Hazeā neural filter to try and create more separation between the spire and background rocks. Thatās what I played with here, though it did require some additional selections go restrict the rehazing to the background rocks.
