C&C please - Northumberland seascape

[Magog]

Good day all.

On our way up to see our daughter in Edinburgh before Christmas, we stopped off at Seahouses on the Northumberland coast to see if there were any photo opportunities. I tried a first attempt at "slowing down" the water using filters; the attached image is from that batch. Over the last few weeks I've begun to experiment with Photoshop Elements; this image has had some of the rocks on the left hand side lightened, and a lobster pot marker "brushed out". The shot was taken on my EOS 450D, 17 - 85mm lens, with a Circular Polariser, 2 stop ND filter and 1 stop ND filter to balance out the sky.



My thoughts are that I could have perhaps had a slightly lower viewpoint, to reduce the expanse of water and frame the flowing water more closely with the rocks. I also wonder whether the angle of view is right; I tried cropping the dark rocks on the upper left out of the picture, but wasn't sure if it improved the picture or not.
Prior research may have provided better locations, but this was unfortunately a bit of a "spur-of-the-moment" shot.

All comments & criticisms gratefully received!

John

[dje]

John I think this works well. The rocks and the misty water add interest and the colours and exposure are good.

Dave

[AB26]

Hi John,

I am not being critical, I am trying to learn form this image by critique and comment.

What I am asking is: What is John trying to achieve with this image? Is there any particular subject in the image? What would the main point of interest in the image be?

The rocks in the foreground seem to be in focus and anything beyond that seems to be to soft. The swirling water does not attract any attention, as a matter of fact I do not find anything in the image that is of particular interest. It is simply a nice image with nice colours, nothing more.

Should you have asked your wife to sit on the rock, third from the left, looking into the “pool” or just standing on the dark rocks you were going to crop out, it would have been a more interesting image.
Should you have used a lower angle to shoot from with more focus on the pink clouds in the sky, it might have had more impact. A pink sky, whilst the sun is setting , has little meaning without the sun or some other object of interest, actually being in the scène.

As far as having the water “flowing” in the image, you have done a great job. Just that something lacking in the image. As you say, very much as spur of the moment image.

[Magog]

Thanks for the comments, guys.

Andre, you make some fair points. I may have become too absorbed in the "how" rather the "what". You seem to support my concern over angle of view - i.e. perhaps too much water, not enough sky.

Regarding having my wife sitting on the rock, given the bleak weather up in the North East of England in late November, all the picture would have shown would be a small huddle of fleece topped with a woolly hat....

[Mike Buckley]

The "what" is not an issue for me at all; it's the predominant area of white water immediately beyond the foreground rocks. If you had used a lower viewpoint, the subject would have had to have been different.

Consider digitally eliminating the island in the distance on the right side.

I'd like to see a larger image before considering any other issues. It really does make a difference when the file has about 900 - 1000 pixels on the long side.

[geoz]

Hi John, I like the image and idea, Suggestion would be to lighten the dark rocks a little to bring out some detail and add more sky so that the horizon is on a third.
George

[Skitalez]

A bit out of focus( what F? Would suggest to focus on the nearest object. Good photo!

[Polar01]

Nice pretty countryside you have up there. I may have shot this in portrait instead of landscape, also lower like you were thinking and also moving back somewhat. I would like somemore forground with the water coming up to kiss the forground, this would also remove alot of the water and allow more of the sky with those clouds and colours to be seen.

Cheers:

Allan

[splashy]

I like this picture, but I personally am not so keen on the misty waters, I like the dynamics of water and like to see it.
The big dark bolder could be cropped partly, or maybe partly lightened up a bit, not sure.
To have a sharper picture you need a higher F.

[Aforns]

Excellent comments !!! Agree that dof would have helped the image, need to have all the foreground rock in focus ... also the biggest change would be processing, you would be amazed the amount of color that can be extracted from the sky. The foreground rocks can also use tweaking !!

If there is any way would try to dive into PhotoShop directly, there are more tutorials and comments than for Elements. Power wise I think elements is plenty good, don't like all the auto things it offers. Only have learned for using in teaching beginners courses. Not sure if you have it available over there but student discounts are great, here you can get for taking adult night courses at a college (any subject) just need the student ID.

Got some similar last summer when I was driving to Bass Rock

[Magog]

Valuable input, folks - thanks.

Mike B, eliminating the island is a possibility; it might be a good task as I learn PSE. However, I've still got to overcome the inner voice that says "But that lump of rock has been there for millenia, and was in fact there in the shot - how can you remove it?" I'm just old-fashioned, I guess.

On another point, I use one of the pre-set ratios in Microsoft Picture Manager to resize images. I've obviously got to manually create a ratio to better fit within the CiC parameters.

Geoff, lightening the rocks could be another PSE learning tool; the little bit I did was rather crude, in "Guided" mode. Can't do anything about the sky, though, as I haven't cropped it down.

Mike, Alfred - there's a common theme developing (no pun intended) about more processing. I have some instructional articles about PSE, which I need to work through (I'm also experimenting with RAW conversion in Canon DPP, so the old brain cells are getting a bit of a work out at the moment!)

Thanks again for the feedback.


John

[Mike Buckley]

I've still got to overcome the inner voice that says "But that lump of rock has been there for millenia, and was in fact there in the shot - how can you remove it?"

I'll provide a few ideas to perhaps help you feel a bit easier about that:

1) Consider that if you had shot ever so slightly to the left that island would not have been included.

2) You weren't making a documentary photograph, so documentation isn't important. If you had been documenting the moment, you wouldn't have used the approach to the water that you did.

3) Nothing about the photo is the same as in the scene if for no other reason than that the scene is three-dimensional and the photo is not. There are lots of other details about the photo that aren't the same as the scene, so maybe it's okay to add just one more detail to that list by removing the island.