Line, Shape and Texture on the Beach

[Donald]

Just trying something a bit different (for me). It is all about line, shape and texture.

Your C & C would be welcome as always.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured, good feeling of movement.

[ST1]

Donald I do like the shapes and lines, well done. May I suggest a crop from the bottom so that the edge of the sea is in the bottom left corner.

[Donald]

Will try that to see how it looks.

[Round Tuit]

Superb is the first word that comes to mind. I must add that it very much looks like a "Donald MacKenzie" to me. I had the same feeling as Peter wrt cropping the bottom although it would sacrifice the square format.

André

[xpatUSA]

Good composition!

A question about contrast from a non-B&W shooter.

The image appears a little soft to this pixel-peeper.

On that basis, I believe your beach scene could be successfully "improved" by wavelet processing, which allows various degrees of contrast at different detail levels (CBDL) from 1px, 2px, 4px, 8px etc up to 1024px in size.

So one slider can increase or decrease the contrast of the larger wave features while leaving their spray alone. Another slider can adjust the contrast of the ripples of the water and yet another can handle beach and water spray details. More is possible with color images - e.g. Chromaticity.

I don't know if Adobe provides that functionality though ...

Could I play with your posted image in RawTherapee?

[Donald]

Could I play with your posted image in RawTherapee?

Please do.

[billtils]

Donald

Not sure that it is entirely "something a bit different (for me)" as it reminded me of some of your furrowed field compositions. The bottom doesn't bother me but the odd linear feature at the top edge does.

Not that any of the above matters - it is very nice!

[Donald]

Donald

Not sure that it is entirely "something a bit different (for me)" as it reminded me of some of your furrowed field compositions.

I suppose that's true.

[xpatUSA]

Please do [play].

Thanks, voila:



I used mainly the 1px, 2px and 32px sliders. The difference is more subtle than my usual examples but hopefully enough to illustrate wavelet work.

[DanK]

Striking. I wouldn't crop from the bottom, or at least not all the way to the water. I tried it, and it made the image less interesting in my eyes.

I do have one suggestion. The bottom 3/4 or so is very high contrast, while the top is very different: a limited tonal range, and low contrast. It looks soft by comparison. I would consider both brightening that area and increasing contrast. I did a very quick edit using a variant of Manfred's approach to dodging. I created a curves layer with a black mask. I set a very aggressive curve and painted in along the top and the top of the diagonal, using 5% flow and luminosity blending. It's not a finished edit, but it might be enough to ascertain whether this is a direction you might want to go.

Here's the edit:



and the result:

[Manfred M]

Let me head off in a slightly different direction on this shot, Donald.

Water is generally soft and smooth, so I will often not even do any sharpening on it when I do an import sharpen on an image so as to give it a softer texture (I will do the same thing with skies as they tend to be "soft" as well). I would probably soften the image up (noise reduction is a quick and easy way of doing that), add a bit of a negative S-curve to reduce contrast as well.

I'm not a fan of large areas of black where there is no shadow detail, so I might crop the bottom a bit (not too much though) and add some noise into the black to put some texture back.

[xpatUSA]

I do have one suggestion. The bottom 3/4 or so is very high contrast, while the top is very different: a limited tonal range, and low contrast. It looks soft by comparison. I would consider both brightening that area and increasing contrast.

Agreed, I found the wave-tops a little bothersome in that respect. Had a go at that here but the mention of 'wavelet processing' may have confused people.

[Donald]

Plenty of food for thought. Thank you all.

[AndrewMcD]

To my eye there was an odd granularity, for lack of a better way to express it, to the water that bothered my eye. Manfred's adjustments reduced that perception and the scene looks more natural to me now. Of course that it appear "natural" may not have been the artist's intent as he described the image as being all about "Line, Shape and Texture."