Impressive sky

[bje07]

Few days ago we had here in Brittanny a stunning sunset, c&c welcomed.

To be frank I was there to shoot the full moon rise, but some clouds prevented from seeing it, so I move 180° and saw what I present here after.

# 1




# 2


# 3


# 4

[Dave Humphries]

Glad to see you were adaptable to the situation, a very nice set of shots Jean.

Cheers, Dave

[pschlute]

No 2 is wonderful.

[joebranko]

Great shots. #1 is my fave, although if it were mine I would be tempted to remove a small part from the top.

[bje07]

Great shots. #1 is my fave, although if it were mine I would be tempted to remove a small part from the top.

like this, 16:9 format ?
Thank you for your suggestion.

[bje07]

Thank you Dave and Peter.

[lovelife65]

Really nice photos. I think #1 with the edit is compositionally my favorite.
#2 has a nice sky and water but the ship is cut off.
#4 is a close second, it's pretty stunning.
I had to look up Lorient France (dumb American that I am) and it looks like a wonderful place.

Thanks for sharing your beautiful place.

[Wavelength]

They are all celebration in colours; really impressive, all of them

[bje07]

Sharon, don't worry, I'm probably more ignorant about how to properly place Oregon on a map of the United States. My geography classes are far, far away!

[Geoff F]

Just two very small problems for me, Jean. First Image has a couple of small dark dots near the first left side light. Maybe gulls or simply a bit of sensor dust but either way I would clone them out.

[DanK]

Nice shots.

I think they do raise a question that's typical of sunsets and blue hour shots generally: what do you want the white balance to be? Some night photographers insist that one should set a neutral white, but I don't buy that. I think we see blue hour as blue. However, these shots, particularly the last two, are VERY blue, as you can see from the boats, which I assume were some sort of white. That strong blue cast dramatically affects the other colors in the shot. Just to illustrate, I'll paste the third one, using the boat as a neutral white. It's all a matter of taste, I don't know that I would prefer it this version, but it does make me wonder whether these would be even nicer if the blue cast were toned down somewhat.

[Manfred M]

+1 to Dan's comments. Sunset shots tend to be about funky colours and the only time where I will look at a reasonable white balance in my work is when I do natural light portraiture under those lighting conditions. Red, orange and yellow skin does not go over very well...

[xpatUSA]

+2 to Dan's comments.

A long time ago, I wondered what was the correct WB for a luminous watch glowing in total darkness. Another one: what would be correct for a traffic light on a dark night in the country w/no street lights?

[Manfred M]

what would be correct for a traffic light on a dark night in the country w/no street lights?

Probably the same as for a black cow standing in the middle of a newly paved road on a moonless night?

[xpatUSA]

Originally Posted by xpatUSA what would be correct for a traffic light on a dark night in the country w/no street lights?

Probably the same as for a black cow standing in the middle of a newly paved road on a moonless night? ...

... Or whatever Chuck Norris says it is, LOL.

At one time it was important to me to show watch lume color correctly.

[bje07]

Nice shots.

I think they do raise a question that's typical of sunsets and blue hour shots generally: what do you want the white balance to be? Some night photographers insist that one should set a neutral white, but I don't buy that. I think we see blue hour as blue. However, these shots, particularly the last two, are VERY blue, as you can see from the boats, which I assume were some sort of white. That strong blue cast dramatically affects the other colors in the shot. Just to illustrate, I'll paste the third one, using the boat as a neutral white. It's all a matter of taste, I don't know that I would prefer it this version, but it does make me wonder whether these would be even nicer if the blue cast were toned down somewhat.

attenuate a little the blue cast why not, but making the white "pure white" does not suit me, the shadows are always blue and here the sun is behind on the horizon, so the boat is in the shade.Your method might be true if the sun came behind me but not here.In addition, the neon lights on the right of the boat turn green on your correction while they are white.

[bje07]

Just two very small problems for me, Jean. First Image has a couple of small dark dots near the first left side light. Maybe gulls or simply a bit of sensor dust but either way I would clone them out.

Hello Geooff, yes: gulls

[Manfred M]

attenuate a little the blue cast why not, but making the white "pure white" does not suit me, the shadows are always blue and here the sun is behind on the horizon, so the boat is in the shade]Your method might be true if the sun came behind me but not here.[addition, the neon lights on the right of the boat turn green on your correction while they are white.

Some of what you have written is both 100% correct and 100% incorrect at the same time. It depends on which perspective you are using; the camera's or the person looking at the scene.

The camera records what is there and allows for a single white point, unless we jump through hoops in post-processing. If you are shooting using auto-white balance, the camera cannot correct at the extreme colour temperatures. Manual white balance can generally capture the extremes more accurately.

The human visual system, on the other hand, processes what we are looking at and those blues in the shadow details look more neutral and the colour spikes created by the phosphors or gas mixtures in the artificial lights are at least partially corrected.

One of my photography instructor's favourite expression is "colour is an opinion"; so your image should reflect what you want it to be, especially when shooting in sunset or sunrise conditions. Just don't expect others to necessarily agree with you.

[DanK]

I largely agree with Manfred. This is a mixed-lighting scene, and there is no one correct (i.e., truly neutral) white balance. Even if the lights were a neutral white, which I doubt, they don't illuminate the scene, so getting them right could be the wrong answer for the image as a whole.

More important, even without that problem, there really isn't (IMHO) a "right" answer. I got into a dispute with a more experienced night photographer who criticized me for not making one blue-hour shot neutral. I disagreed; I don't think we actually perceive blue hour that way, and in any case, it resulted in an ugly image. I ended up presenting three versions to a photo club: the original, a neutral one, and one in between. I asked for preferences, and no one picked the neutral one.

Still, I think there is always a risk of excessively non-neutral rendering.

In these images, the lights are not the same tone in the two images that have them showing. This leads me to guess that you were using AWB, as white balance changes very quickly at that hour, and in an image like this, even a modest reframing can cause the camera to guess WB differently. In the third image, Photoshop applies a correction of -27 (more blue) and +13 (more green) to the lights. In the fourth, it applies -7 (very slightly more blue) and +33 (more magenta). Both changes substantially alter the rest of the image. The third actually becomes substantially more blue.

So it boils down to taste. Of course, I wasn't there to see it, but the third and fourth look unnaturally blue to me. As I suggested before, I don't think that for my taste, I would to as far in the other direction as in the one I posted. That was just for illustration. The image was so blue what Photoshop (camera raw filter) actually maxed out the blue-to-yellow adjustment. I think for my taste, I would warm it a bit (blue to yellow) and probably do a very small adjustment in the direction of green from magenta, but that's just my taste.

[xpatUSA]

The image was so blue what Photoshop (camera raw filter) actually maxed out the blue-to-yellow adjustment. I think for my taste, I would warm it a bit (blue to yellow) and probably do a very small adjustment in the direction of green from magenta, but that's just my taste.

Just for my information, Dan, are those adjustments the same as or equivalent to the b* and a* axes in CIELAB?