I am not sure how I feel about the blown out sky, besides that it adds the feeling of near to infinity if there is such a thing.

-- Tait Stangl (taits@usa.net), September 30, 1998

Answers

The foggy look from the flowing water is very beautiful!

The blown out sky is not wonderful, but I can't really think of an alternative that would be preferable: certainly a blue sky or a lots of cloud features would take something away from this image. IMHO it would be better if it was completely blown-out or just gray with no clouds visible at the sides.

More than the sky, the tilted horizon is the most distracting thing to me.

Also, the rocks on the left are kind of a muddle. What do you guys think about a *little* fill flash in this case, perhaps not to actually light up the rocks, but get some points of reflected light from them?

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), September 30, 1998.

tait, i must agree that the tilted horizon is destructive of this image. of course, i have suffered the same problem on many occasions. possibly the picture could be improved by a crop below the horizon.

-- wayne harrison (wayno@netmcr.com), September 30, 1998.

It's possible that a graduated ND may have helped the helped the blown out sky, provided there was something interesting in that portion of the sky.

An interesting thing about the horizon line is that it is actually a curve (not only theoretically, but in this image), resulting from the wide angle lens used to capture this image. Because of the wide angle lens, the horizon will be curved to some degree, unless the horizon line is at the vertical or horizontal midpoint of the frame. While a majority of the horizon line is tilted in this image, I don't think it's fatal, especially since it flattens out at the left edge of the frame. Now, someone needs to establish some rule like "Do/Don't put the horizonital point of a curved horizon line in the center of the frame".

-- Joe Boyd (boydjw@traveller.com), September 30, 1998.

The tilted horizon is the main problem I think. BTW the curvature of the earth ISN'T visible in wide angle shots! A rectilinear wide angle will show a straight horizon. Curved horizons come from lenses with excessive distortion.

-- Bob Atkins (bob_atkins@hotmail.com), September 30, 1998.

How long of an expose was this? I love the fogging of the water!

-- Adam Harrison (eros@ncd.com), September 30, 1998.

Mea culpa, Bob

-- Joe Boyd (boydjw@traveller.com), September 30, 1998.

It's the rocks and sea that are interesting to me. You could straighten out the horizen, but why not just retake it in landscape format and include more rocks and sea and less "blown out sky"?

-- Larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), September 30, 1998.

Something that hasn't been mentioned yet is the lack of color saturation. I'm not sure if this is due to the high contrast, the direction of the sun, or the slight overexposure of the frame.

You can crop the white sky, and (digitally) straighten the frame. However, the washed out colors are there to stay.

--JT

-- James Tarquin (tarquin@erols.com), September 30, 1998.

I think this image would be better as a black and white. The contrast of the light on the rocks would really jump out at the viewer ina properly-printed black and white. You would also get lots of nice light greys in the "mist" of the waves. The little bit of color in the sand just distracts me from the rest of the image.

Also, I would either level the horizon or crop it out. There seems to be a very small amount of detail above the horizon, try to burn-in that area just a bit more to bring-out that detail.

Good image!

-- Joel Collins (jwc3@mindspring.com), September 30, 1998.

in my humble opinion this picture is perfect - including the tilted horizon. it evokes a whistfully blue mood in the viewer - which is rare for a landscape. BTW - considering the horizon is further to the edge of the image circle due to the vertical framing - i would say that the distortion performance on this lens is quite good.

-- tom williams (image.araya@mailcity.com), October 01, 1998.

Despite technical flaws in the upper portion of the frame this is a moody, evocative, original, beautiful picture. As such it deserves greater praise than any boring but technically perfect image, IMHO.

-- Richard Shiell (rshiell@lightspeed.net), October 02, 1998.

A photo can be moody, evocative, original and beautiful and still be technically perfect. The horizon in my opinion is a serious flaw cause it doesn't look intentional and the color balance seems not right either. If you spend some more time at this place, perhaps go back a couple of times and take additional photos under different lighting conditions, you could end up with a real "stunner" rather than a so so picture.

-- (andreas@physio.unr), October 03, 1998.

Thanks for all the comments. I think Joel is right about B&W as for the horizen it is anoying but not more than a .5% tilt. Taken with 28-70/f2.8L at around 10 sec. @ f22.

-- Tait Stangl (taits@usa.net), October 07, 1998.