Predawn Pier

[Rita]

About an hours drive from where I live is a town called White Rock. There is a pier there that is very popular. A few days ago I went for the sunrise and found that I was totally alone, which was very nice. That is so rare at this location as even for sunrise there are lots of early morning photographers milling around. Well, the sunrise was nothing spectacular but I did get this predawn shot of the pier with no people. It had rained during the night and the pier boards were still quit wet. I really like the colours that showed in the image but I am not totally happy with the appearance of the sky. This was a 30 second exposure at ISO 100. I am not sure why the sky looks so blotchy. Can this be an environmental thing or is there something that I can do, in future endeavours to improve the look of the sky.

Any feedback is appreciated.

[NorthernFocus]

Nicely done.

[Wavelength]

Awesome...you should have stayed there and also captured another with someone walking in...do you have such one???

[Manfred M]

This is a very nice shot, Rita.

The blotchiness likely comes from two sources. With a 30 second exposure you are definitely going to get some sensor noise, even at base ISO. With a long exposure, the sensor is going to warm up and exacerbate the issue (hot sensors are a source of noise). The other thing you are seeing is the camera picking up the clouds, and that will give you a bit of blotchiness too.

At 24mm with a full frame camera, you could certainly shoot at f/16 and more likely f/11 and have everything focus. I don't have my DoF app handy. At f/11 you wouldn't get the diffraction softening either and you would be shooting in the 7 or 8 second range. I'd suggest you play with that part of your setup next time to see what it does for you.

As for clouds, if your PP software let you do a curves adjustment, darken the darker shades and that will remove some of the issues with any clouds.

[IzzieK]

Maybe the starburst on the front is too big that it failed to show the clouds. It is a good nice shot, Rita.

[Shadowman]

Nice capture.

[Rebel]

Awesome shot Rita!

[ionian]

I really like this shot - and I'm grateful for Manfred's comments on the technical aspects as well.

[Round Tuit]

All I can say is: WOW.

Well done Rita.

[Rita]

Thanks everyone for your kind comments.

Nandakumar, I don't have one with a person in it. I stayed for about 1 1/2 hours and when I left there were only 2 other people around and they were down on the beach. Considered adding someone but my pp isn't that good

Manfred, thanks for the explanation. I will try the settings you suggest next time I attempt something like this. Today I will be working for a few hours but when I come home I will look at the curves adjustment. This sounds like it will work nicely.

[Mike Buckley]

Fabulous composition and color!

Manfred's suggestions about the sky are spot on, though shooting at larger apertures may not result in the same starbursts if the aperture is too large.

As for working with this image, I simply selected the dark blue tones in the sky and applied a large amount of noise reduction. That wasn't to reduce the noise as much as to blur the tones in the sky to eliminate the blotchiness (better than using Gaussian blur in this situation at least for me). Even though the effect bled into part of the starbursts, the overall result worked well in my mind.

[bnnrcn]

Great image Rita I agree with Mike that noise reduction might be a good tool to get rid of the blotchiness. I sometimes use noise reduction to soften the clouds or reduce banding in the sky too.

[ST1]

Well captured Rita, the colour on the wet boards with the reflected light add to the strength of the image. Looking at the image the landscape photographer (in me) wants to rotate the image a smidgen anti-clockwise so that the board line is level with the bottom of the image, or maybe it's not the landscaper in me but my OCD

[Rita]

Mike, thanks for the feedback. I will try your method as well as Manfreds and see what I come up with.

[Rita]

Thanks Binnur.

[Rita]

Thanks for commenting Peter. I thought the boards were straight until you mentioned them. Now when I look again I see that I did miss by a smidgeon

[Manfred M]

Thanks for commenting Peter. I thought the boards were straight until you mentioned them. Now when I look again I see that I did miss by a smidgeon

I think your camera was not perfectly level when you took this shot. When I drop a guidleline across the handrails, the top and middle are just about perfect. But the bottom one and the boards on the deck are off a bit. This cannot be fixed by rotating, the way Peter suggests. I would get out the Skew adjustment and pull the bottom left corner down a bit. I suspect if you do that, the top left might have to go up a hair.

[Rita]

Ok, attempting to put into practice the suggestions that I have received, here is my new edit. I have applied more noise reduction to the sky, done a curves adjustment, and tried to fix the skew. For the curves adjustment I didn't want to go too dark and lose the blue. Did find that it didn't take much to turn it black. I am starting to like the sky better now but I think I would like to do some more work on it to see if I can do a bit more justice to it. What do you think???

[rachel]

I think it's stunning - it's the wet floor and reflection that makes it for me.

[Manfred M]

Rita - you've tried to fix an problem caused by a camera that was not perfectly level by rotating the image. You've now introduced a problem that is even more noticeable than the board not being straight.

I've taken a screenshot of your latest edits and dropped some guidelines on it to show you the distortion. Now that the railing is not even, the issue is even more apparent than in your original edit.

The only way to fix it is to use the skew tool and move the corners of the image to remove the distortion caused by the camera not being level.