Traigh Ghearadha

[billtils]

We arrived in Stornoway with more than an hour to spare before check-in for the ferry back to the mainland, and passed the time with a drive north along the coast road to this small, delightful beach. The weather was anything but delightful with 25 to 30mph wind blowing straight off the sea into the bay, the camera came out ...


Fortunately I was able to shoot this at about 45 degrees to the wind and keep the lens and body dry.





This one was taken looking straight out to sea and directly into the wind. The true colours were shades of dull grey but I played around in ACR to create this (sort of) abstract.

[DanK]

Bill,

I find these sorts of images--particularly the first--very hard to deal with, and I have junked most of mine, so take this with a very big grain of salt. You presumably want the misty, moody atmosphere, but at the same time, the image has limited tonal range and contrast and comes out looking somewhat drab as a result. If you do any of the standard things to compensate in the usual RGB mode, you will increase saturation, which would be a very different image.

So, for what it is worth, I tried three changes, all using luminosity blending mode to avoid increasing saturation:

1. I moved in the black and white points to get more total range

2. I dodged the rocks to bring out shadow detail.

3. I used a curve to increase midtone contrast, but I anchored the bottom point on the diagonal and only raised a brighter area, to avoid re-darkening the rocks.

Would something in this direction help?

[Shadowman]

Nice efforts, Dan addressed the issues with the first, with the second image there's quite a bit of noise in the sky, not sure if the editing enhanced it or if it was never addressed. Not sure how you've created an abstract without somehow envisioning a descriptive composition, I would think the dull gray would've lent to you a vision of an abstraction.

[billtils]

Nice efforts, Bill ... gray would've lent to you a vision of an abstraction.

Thanks John. Personally I agree with you but thought I'd post this one and see what feedback (if any) resulted. "Abstracts" can be very personal in how they are received

[billtils]

Bill,

I find these sorts of images--particularly the first--very hard to deal with, and I have junked most of mine, so take this with a very big grain of salt. You presumably want the misty, moody atmosphere, but at the same time, the image has limited tonal range and contrast and comes out looking somewhat drab as a result. If you do any of the standard things to compensate in the usual RGB mode, you will increase saturation, which would be a very different image.

So, for what it is worth, I tried three changes, all using luminosity blending mode to avoid increasing saturation:

1. I moved in the black and white points to get more total range

2. I dodged the rocks to bring out shadow detail.

3. I used a curve to increase midtone contrast, but I anchored the bottom point on the diagonal and only raised a brighter area, to avoid re-darkening the rocks.

Would something in this direction help?

Thanks Dan. As it happens those steps are what I tried but your version is better than mine! Thanks for your input.

[Cantab]

Thanks Dan. As it happens those steps are what I tried but your version is better than mine! Thanks for your input.

Bill, your original version and Dan's edit produce quite different effects (at the risk of stating the obvious! ). I've lived most of my life near a rocky coastline and think you did a good job of capturing the typically murkiness of storm conditions in your version in post #1. Dan's edits create a more graphic image. But perhaps it's simply a question of horses for courses.

[billtils]

... with the second image there's quite a bit of noise in the sky, not sure if the editing enhanced it or if it was never addressed. Not sure how you've created an abstract without somehow envisioning a descriptive composition, I would think the dull gray would've lent to you a vision of an abstraction.

Thanks John. I have some dull grey versions that will be worked on over the next few weeks, but as Bruce mentions in #6 these were shot in murky conditions and it's a bit of a challenge capturing that without ending up with an image that is as dull and grey as the original. I pushed things a lot in the opposite direction to see how it worked. It is "abstract" in that it's nothing like the real thing in tone, the sand and sea in #1 are reasonably close to the actual scene (the rocks got the luminosity/curves/dodging treatment plus dehazing in AC

[Wavelength]

Nice originals and good improvements in edit