Ocean Sunset

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Pescadero State Beach, California Nikon FM2n, 50mm f1.8, Elite II 100, handheld

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), December 04, 1998

Answers

Maybe with a Grad ND filter you could have your sunset and keep the rocks too.

-- larry Korhnak (lvk@gnv.ifas.ufl.edu), December 04, 1998.

I agree with Larry, forground is to dark and sky is a little over exposed IMO.

-- Tait Stangl (taits@usa.net), December 04, 1998.

Agree with the last two comments but I really like this shot. Well done.

-- jason elsworth (jason.elsworth@vuw.ac.nz), December 04, 1998.

You guys are right: time to invest in a ND grad filter. I have a cheap Cokin, but don't really like it. A one stop filter here would have been nice, as well as if I had a tripod handy.

The foreground exposure is indeed dark and I wish the water were lighter, I screwed up when measuring the brightness difference between the water and rocks (as a regular N90s user, I'm used to a spot meter and get stupid clumsy when using the center-weighted FM2n).

The rocks were the problem, since I wanted them to be silhouttes for two reasons: 1) they're ugly and covered with all kinds of junk, including an unholy amount of white bird droppings, and 2) I wanted them to look like "shadows" of the clouds. I don't know if the parallels between the line of the rocks and clouds is evident to y'all, perhaps just wishful thinking on my part (although, if your monitor is not set to see the tones in the test strip below, you won't see much separation at all between the rocks and water).

The background exposure is pretty much what I saw that day, despite the blocked up exposure in the brightest region of the sun rays. I guess I could have exposed for that highlight, but the sky would be unnaturally dark blue and the foreground too dark (again, need that ND grad!).



-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), December 04, 1998.


I really like this shot! Yes, exposure isn't perfect...but hey, nobody is!

Try cropping this REALLY tightly around the light coming from the cloud, in a vertical format. I think you might like it.

-- Jason Fobart (jason@fobart.net), December 05, 1998.



I think it is a nice shot and does not need an ND-Grad filter to bring out the foreground. In this imge, the foreground is secondary. The radiating light and cloud is primary. The ND-Grad filter IMO simply dilutes the impact of the sunset and creates a less dramatic image. PS: The sky could have been a little darker!

-- Bahman Farzad (cpgbooks@mindspring.com), December 05, 1998.

As much as I hate to say "me too", listen to what Bahman is saying.

Keith

-- Keith Clark (ClarkPhotography@spiritone.com), December 05, 1998.


Me three!

-- Chris Hawkins (peace@clover.net), December 05, 1998.

Andrew -

I do like the photo, it does have one flaw I think, The upper cloud is far enough away from the sunset (which is beautiful) to cause two focal points on the photo to exist. The eye is drawn to the lower clouds and then to the upper clouds. There isn't a point for the eye to settle on. In scrolling up to write this I removed the upper cloud and the single lower point is much stronger and still makes a nice image. However having chased clouds for a while now, I find you can use all the body english you want to at the time and the clouds go where ever the wind blows.

Thanks for listening,

Ben

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 05, 1998.


Thanks for the continuing comments!

Bahman, you're right in that the focus is the sunset and I have no desire to get detail in the rocks, but I believe a one stop ND grad would have helped the image by separating the rock silhouttes from the water more.

When I took the pictures, the scenery was transcendent: it looked like heaven was opening up. Part of this effect was the lightness and a darker sky for richer colors (and to hold the detail in the sun rays) would certainly have made for a pretty picture, but it would have also been a different picture, one that was more "romantic", for lack of a better description.

I can't say that this was the thought going through my mind at the point. For the sky, I was concerned with accuracy of exposure (reproducing what I saw), and only in the rocks was I "making" a picture (checking that the rocks were silhouttes rather than the ugly mess that I saw).

Taking Bahman's p.s. comment to heart, I *should* have been thinking of the possibilities for making an image overall and tried a deeper exposure of the sky, as well as the exposures like this that I chose. This would have probably completely obliterated the foreground, though, hence again my wish for a ND grad. If you take Photoshop and darken just the foreground, you see that the black line of the foreground against the clouds is ineffective: it's not a flat horizon, it's not a mountain range, it's really not much of anything. Here, at least I hope, is a horizon and a line of rocks paralleling the line of the clouds.

In any case, thanks for the comment, it's a direction I hope to keep working on, that is, making images rather than just trying for "accuracy", which is the photographically immature stage I'm still at right now.

Regarding the clouds at the top, Ben, they are indeed the primary source of my ambivalence with this image (in addition to the foreground exposure). Cropping the top does result in a reasonable image, although you lose the richness of the blue sky above. I suppose the clouds are too richly detailed and too close to the 1/3 position to be considered a framing element, but I find cropping the top just above the clouds unsatisfying and it doesn't look like the image would work if the clouds were simply higher. There are two things I really like about the clouds, though: 1) they are a soft element (along with the light detail in the water) and 2) it makes a neat atmospheric picture where you see the clouds at top, the big clouds on the horizon, and the bands of haze in the sun rays.

Jason, thanks for the comment, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm not a big fan of a vertical cropping of this photo, as you lose the fanning out of the rays and most of the elements are arrayed horizontally (line of the rocks, horizon, line of the clouds on the horizon, lines of haze, clouds on top), but if it works for you, great!

Again, thanks for the comments, any more would be appreciated.

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), December 09, 1998.



Andrew-

Indeed I saw the parallel between the clouds and rocks. I thought it was neat. About the darkness of the rocks. I think they are fine. I have been an artist, starving, for 30+ years and a semi-serious photographer about a year. I find the photographer seems to want to have detail in everything. The artist in general is not bothered by that particular character flaw (chuckle), he seeks the image, without detail, first because it can take him days to perfect just the tonal values in an initial sketch, then he is free to do what is required to do the final painting. I believe great photographs have great tonal values not perfect detail.

I still like the lower half, the sea sould be slightly brighter but the rocks are good as is, emphasis directed to the sunset without detracting from it.

-- Ben Lanterman (benl@anet-stl.com), December 09, 1998.


I find I like the photo better if I crop off the dark water just below the rocks, leaving only the sillouettes, and around the top third, leaving only the backlit cloud and the sun rays.

This makes the relationship between the clouds and the rocks more clear. Perhaps using a longer lens to crop off from both the top and bottom of the picture would bring what you were really interested in into focus. The clouds on top are sort of distracting, and don't add a lot to the photo, IMHO.

Bracketing down is always a cool thing to try with direct sunset pictures. You get interesting results.

-- Pete Su (psu@jprc.com), December 09, 1998.


Pete, thanks for the cropping suggestion. I like it with the foreground water cropped, keeping the raised "pool" of water, though. Light cropping on the top also seems to help, but 1/3 looks pretty severe to me. No way around it, I just need to remember to move those clouds before shooting next time :) You know, I stopped bracketing for a while because it was making me lazy in evaluating exposure, but you're right, it's smart to do with such crazy lighting conditions...sometimes dogma overrules your common sense!

Ben, thanks for the comments. I at least try to make art sometimes :) Actually, I pretty much do what my music students do. A lot of them don't want to attempt even simple charts, since it's frustrating as a beginner to plow through them, they just want to do exercises until they get playing the instrument down. I was the same way and my old grade school music teacher corrected me that "it's important to starting making MUSIC early on, since it's about pushing the right keys on the clarinet, but making music come out of it". Anyways, I present to you the photographic equivalent of "Mary Had A Little Lamb", played 1/3 step flat, in the key of D minor, squeaks and all :)

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), December 09, 1998.


Very nice shot, and brings happy memories of many days spent shooting at Pesc'o. I find the wave in the center foreground a tad distracting; a longer exposure or different timing might do away with that?

-- Alexey Merz (alexey@webcom.com), December 20, 1998.

The water in the slightly right center foreground is not a wave, rather water running off of a pool/plateau between the rocks. With the frequency of the waves, that are never completely emptied out, so a time exposure wouldn't have helped. You're right, though, that it breaks up the rocks a bit, making it somewhat distracting.

-- Andrew Y. Kim (andy_roo@mit.edu), January 10, 1999.


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