How would you salvage this shot?

[Magog]

This shot of breaking waves was taken at Cidade Velha, on Sao Tiago, Cape Verde islands, a couple of weeks ago. It was a bit of a "snatch" shot, taken from the shoreline. I knew that I really needed a longer lens, but hoped to be able to "do" something with the shot. (EOS 60D, 70-200mm f4 L at 200mm, 1/1250s, ISO160, f8 -0.3 exposure compensation)

Straight off the camera (wonky horizon and all!):


My first attempt at improvement:


Then I thought a closer crop may work better, with a bit of sharpening:


Then I thought, what about black and white?:


So now I'm not sure which is best, or if indeed something else would be better.
Any thoughts, folks?

[Manfred M]

John - I'm not sure what you mean by salvage the shot. The shots are what they are and other than minor tweaks, for instance straightening out the horizon line in the first image you really have what you have captured.

The first thing that strikes me is the composition. The breaking waye is in the centre of the image. Have the subject there, rather than something that is a bit more of centre would be one place to look at. If these shots are crops, you might be able to play around with that.

The other thing that strikes me is the high shutter speed. You have frozen the individual drops of water. I might have been tempted to play with the shutter speed (shooting off a tripod) and you might have found shooting slower and allowing for a bit of motion blur might (or might not) give you something more interesting.

Having the horizon in the centre of the image often does not create a particularly compelling image, and you seem to have it near the middle in all of these shots. It seems to be rather overcast and untextured, and really does not add to the image. You might try cropping the sky back to see if that works better for you. The water has texture and is much more interesting than the sky.

As for the B&W conversion, I'm not sure if it buys you a lot as the scene is already quite monochromatic. That being said, the B&W looks fine.

Capturing moving water is the source of endless debate; some people love the silky smoothness of a very long expoure, while others will like seeing the individual drops frozen in time.

Normally we look for a foreground, middle ground and background in an image; these shots do have the middle ground and background, but the foreground is virtually missing. Again, if this is a crop, you might be able to bring some more foreground into the image.

I wonder if the issue is really what you saw (and smelled and heard) versus the two-dimensional representation that the camera produces. I wonder if this is part of the issue; you saw something that compelled you to take the shots and the resultant image isn't what you experienced.



I'm not sure if any of these suggestions are going to do it for you. If you are in the area you could try to reshoot and then you might try to "work the scene", i.e.use different focal lengths and shutter speeds. take the shot from down low or try to take it from a height (if these vantage points exist). You may get something you like or you may just walk away with a nice memory; unfortunately, not all scenes result in a compelling image, not matter what we do.

[steve welle]

I agree with GrumpyDiver almost 100% except for the part about longer exposure. It's a matter of taste of course, but I think too many water shots use long exposure for the smoothing effect and to me it usually looks too artificial although if the theme is tranquility it can be a good choice. But in this case I think the story is the violence of the water crashing into the rocks and spraying the water around. The individual water drops are good in this case.

[Magog]

Manfred, thanks for those comments. Unfortunately going back there is not an option - we were on a cruise to celebrate our 60th birthdays, so going back there is not likely. This also meant that we were travelling light regarding photo equipment; we were on an excursion from the ship, so setting a tripod up for long exposures might have incurred the wrath of my fellow travellers!
Another reason for the hand-held, fast exposure is that I did want to freeze the motion of the wave; I am with Steve on that point. I have taken long exposures of waterfalls and swirling waves before, but I thought that freezing the water might give a better impression of the power.

I think you hit he nail on the head in your penultimate paragraph - I might be trying to express the power of what I saw and heard, but the base image isn't quite suitable.

[Manfred M]

I agree with GrumpyDiver almost 100% except for the part about longer exposure.

Steve - when I write about longer exposures, I'm not looking at the 15 minute exposures with a 15-stop ND filter. Slowing down to 1/30 sec can impart motion to the water without looking overly artificial. I find that I often bracket moving water just to get a choice of images. Layering a couple of shots together and allowing a mix of flow rates can look very interesting.

I find I shoot falling snow fall the same way. Shooting at really high shutter speeds freezes individual snow flakes, but I find allowing a bit of motion blur with the falling and swirling snow can add more dimension to an image. I tend to shoot these with a tripod; the background has to be tack sharp and the motion blur on the individual snowflakes as to look natural.

That being said; I have the same issue as you with overly blurred water movement; too many examples of badly done images out there, but I have seen some that look absolutely sublime.

[Wavelength]

I like the vibrancy of the scene very much; my personal feeling is that the color scheme of the subject is that the original and conversion does not make much difference....

Regards

[ajohnw]

I wonder if it's a size problem more than anything else - smoothed out water with long exposures is well worn out.

Hope you don't mind. Not been near the sea recently when conditions have been suitble for shots like that. I had a play but also used a tone mapping brush to enhance the shapes before enlarging it.
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Better - worse??

John
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[Magog]

Interesting, John - thanks.
A bit more "body" in the water in your edit, I think.

[steve welle]

... I find that I often bracket moving water just to get a choice of images. Layering a couple of shots together and allowing a mix of flow rates can look very interesting...

Good point Manfred. Never hurts to try different settings and pick the best outcome later. Free with digital except for all the time it takes to go through all the choices. But I suspect that's one of the things many of us enjoy.

[ajohnw]

Interesting, John - thanks.
A bit more "body" in the water in your edit, I think.

Tone mapping stretches the contrast so can be used to undo what was done to get the image into a jpg's colour space which often involves loss of contrast. In this case it's made the spray stand out from the background as well as enhance the shapes. Probably a little over done in this case but not to the usual cartoon type colours extent. If you use PS and can't brush tone map locally you will probably have to use layers.

John
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[bnnrcn]

I agree with Nandakumar,The original one is better.I would crop it a little bit from the bottom and I would straighten the horizon.

[Shadowman]

I like the tight cropped images best.