Off to Work

[Colin Southern]

The fruits of tonight's labour. Interested to hear what you think!

[crisscross]

there are lots of intruiging and beautiful elements in this one Colin, just slightly wondering if there are too many. Tried cropping off the righthand (those wavelets breaking detract from the clear wake from the ship?) and some off the top (seems stronger with just a strip of yellow sky above the mountains?)....but then want to add a bit on the left to get the end of the sandbank. I bet if you had a hundred people with the crop tool you would get 100 variations, but you did ask!

Particularly like the near boat and its wake

[Brigitte]

It´s beautiful .. Great shot!

[Wirefox]

Excellent composition. It certainly complies with the rule of thirds. If it were me (and this is a personal thing) I would shop out the poles and the craft in the middle distance. Superb image either way up.

[Geoff F]

My first thought was crop a bit from the right side; but that would lose the best of your sky. Although just a little might still work.

[Colin Southern]

Thanks for the comments folks.

Just as a bit of a follow-up ...

Commercial work like this gets printed onto canvas - usually 11 x 22 inches or 22 x 44 inches - and portions of the image get wrapped around the sides of the frame, which tends to give a psudo-crop to the image (from a frontal perspective) ...

... so I have to leave extra space when composing - which is what your seeing here. I also tend to leave in things like the small posts; they can look distracting at this size and resolution, but show good amounts of detail when printed large.

[Dave Humphries]

Very nice Colin,

I also tend to leave in things like the small posts; they can look distracting at this size and resolution, but show good amounts of detail when printed large.

That's interesting to know; I've often wondered about such things you have left in

Now, if only you'd do us a special crop before posting here, to stop us querying stuff at the edges everytime

Excellent as ever, well done,

[Colin Southern]

That's interesting to know; I've often wondered about such things you have left in.

Thanks Dave. It takes a bit of getting used to as it works both ways; sometimes detail like that is worth leaving in for a large print, whereas at other times, things that look good when printed small don't translate well into a large print -- the rules of local contrast seem to change at some point.

I could do special crops just for posting here, but basically, I'm just too lazy!

[Dave Humphries]

I'm just too lazy!

I know

[Bill44]

Nice work Colin, I like the style you are pursuing.

[kevinbythebeach]

its nice i like it...

[Lincs1]

One of the best I have seen here

Lincs1

[Wirefox]

I also tend to leave in things like the small posts; they can look distracting at this size and resolution, but show good amounts of detail when printed large.

That makes perfect sense Colin. So much our viewing is web based that it is easy to forget the other output media. I am obviously not a commercial photographer but I do have one question. How do you decide what will look right in large printed format? I could well see me spending a small fortune on prints that did not cut it when viewed full size

[Colin Southern]

I am obviously not a commercial photographer but I do have one question. How do you decide what will look right in large printed format? I could well see me spending a small fortune on prints that did not cut it when viewed full size

Just by experience really. It really comes down to 2 areas (for me anyway) ...

- The amount of detail in small things (re: whether they have sufficient detail to look meaningful) - you can get a fairly good idea by looking onscreen at the right magnification.

- The area of colours - case in point ...



It's a "companion" shot to my Avatar (they're "sister" lakes in my region). Small it looks quite OK, but printed large, there's just too much gray (gray sky that's also reflected in the water).

Ironically though, I've sold to large canvases of it!

The other "gotcha" is dust spots - they can become really obvious at 44 x 22" if you forget to zap them!