Beach_Sunset

This being my 1st image to land in the POW has certainly been very interesting. I hope to be able to make use of all of the constructive comments here. I admire much of the work of many that have commented here.

 

I really have not attempted to sell my images. At some point it would be nice to attempt it. I believe that there are allot of great landscape photographers in the market. It would take quite an effort to be successful. I take pictures because I like getting out in these locations and attempting to capture what I see. I really love the scenery here (Alaska). I print my images, give them to friends and family and post them here and other photo sites.

 

In this image I really liked the patterns in the mud left behind by the outgoing tide and the light. This was taken when the tide was at its lowest point. With the strong tidal currents in this area the beach will not look the same next time it is exposed.

 

Yes I did use a .9 ND Grad....the mountains were already silhouetted and dark without the filter but the sun was still bright even though it was in the clouds and the haze from forest fires. The filter might not have been the right choice but I did not feel I really had the time to experiment with other filters at that moment. It was taken at the lowest angle I could manage and still see through the view finder (crouched as low as I could).

 

I would not choose this as my favorite image, I do like it though. It just happens to be my most recent post.

 

I do like Lannie's adjusted version and I appreciate everyone's comments. Vincent K. has commented on other images of mine and always been very helpful. I still have much to learn.

 

Thanks to all.

Dave K.

Looks too fake. Composition is good, colours are strong. The rock at the end of the beach is the wrong colour. The glare off the water at the end is wrong too.

 

Nice try at a blended image.

 

Dna

Lovely. Wish I'd taken it myself.

I would have thought that ND grad filters were no longer the best way to handle exposure problems when shooting digital. Why restrict yourself to a straight line - hard or soft? Why not bracket the exposures and blend them in PS?

 

I tried to raise the issue of print prices on another forum thread and nobody responded. It's critical because it determines what venue and what kind of buyers you're appealing to. What strikes me about this image is that I think it has mass appeal on this site, yet I've never seen anything like it for sale anywhere - meaning a sunset image where the use of the filter made the image look surreal. If it wasn't conceived as a shot for PN consumption, then it was at least probably selected from a larger number based at least partly on its surreal qualities.

 

I suspect that Lannie's version, which looks more realistic and reflects what many of us would have hoped to capture, wouldn't have rated as highly, yet it's a more technically correct image and reflects what the most experienced landscape shooters would be trying to achieve.

 

I like some of Dave's images, and have at least one of them in my Favorites Pages. Maybe this is a good choice for POW precisely because of its potential for discussion, but its position on the home page for a week also has the effect of reinforcing what could be seen as the best way to shoot sunsets.

Carl, the Grad ND can reduce the dynamic range to get a wider tone range, especially in this case. Notice the sun is right at the edge of the mountain. Bracket the exposures may not be able to keep the consistency of the color, IMO.

back in the "old days" of advertising photography, before filter

companies began to spawn an ever mind-numbing array of

effect filters, we shooters had to cut-and-paste kodak wratten

filters on the front (and back) of our lenses to create visuals

effects similar to what is displayed here.

 

we used to refer to these client-requested techniques as "cheap

tricks".

 

it's unfortunate that what started as merely attention-grabbing

techniques, that were (and still are) the equivalent of a

carnival-huckster soap-selling cry, have become the norm

amongst nature photographers.

 

ma nature gets no respect.

 

imo, this photograph is so over-the-top - comp for comp's sake,

color, saturation, (very apparent) effects for effects sake - that it's

hard to take seriously for anything other than a hallmark

wish-you-were-here greeting card, which, as others have

mentioned, would probably sell very well.

 

just my opinion

To be fair, I think that Dave has a wonderful collection of fine photographs in his portfolio. His Panoramics folder is outstanding and I recommend others to go take a look at it. My criticism of the present POW is not meant to slight Dave or his abilities.

But Carl has a good point as far as this one being picked for discussion; that is what the POW was originally supposed to generate. Hopefully, others will weigh the image and its flaws and not come to the conclusion that this is the landscape ideal to aspire to.

More importantly, however, I am equally hopeful that others will realize that the POW is not a prize to be won but is actually a double edged sword that, when wielded honestly, provides the feedback that we all need. If we can navigate a course through the "hunks of milk chocolate" and the false "WOW, it's perfect" responses (Dave, you don't need those!), perhaps we can come away from this as better photographers. Regards.

Dave I just saw this today, I am not a person that has the best of words to say about what should be here or there, what filters to use and what is not that great to use. I am a simple person that is learning as I go. I don't even have a nice landscape picture yet and most likely would not take a good one anyways as I have not practiced at it nor have the filters or have this beautiful creation that you are so blessed with in so many of your pictures.

 

I take pictures of what is right here around me at home and try my best to get better at it as I go. I have read some of what the others above have said I agree with some stuff but not all. Is there such a thing as the perfect shot? I do not know! Can we always Improve I surly think so.

 

To end this little use of words of mine that I have written to you here I would like to say, Well Done Dave it's a great picture! You have captured a slice of beauty and have served it up to us in a beautiful way. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder; tell that to the so called experts out there this very day. This beholder says its beautiful and thank you for sharing it to us this very day.

 

DK.

I disagree with some of the comments. In my opinion, this is a very well-done photo of a "routine" landscape shot. So what if the color is saturated or "altered"? Photography is about capturing images and manipulation of color, contrast, etc. Ansel Adams was a master of it!

Gradiant filters have always been a given absolute in large format photography. Not so much as in front of the lens, as here, but behind it and in the form of a circular grad. These are necessary to compensate for the inevitable light falloff as one approaches the edge of the lens's covering power.

In this photo the use of the gradient filter was completely unnecessary. It was used simply for the effect without thought given to more appropriate means of expressing the scene.

I think many of us who try to shoot high contrast (10 stops or more), high colour scenes like these would love to be able to ditch those grads if our recording medium would only allow it. Once recorded, the photographer's artistic vision could then be fine-tuned using whatever postprocessing might be desired (or not). However, we are not at that stage with today's technologies and we usually have to live with something between 5-7 stops instead. Yes, you can take multiple exposures if the conditions allow it, but they don't always. Very long exposures for example taken after sundown (or before sun-up) will have different light in the two frames, and with moving objects like ocean waves even merging short exposures can be difficult. There is also something very satisfying about taking a shot in a single frame, as it lends itself to more readily maintain the willful illusion that a photograph can be an accurate representation of the scene. The same sentiment seems to be reflected in the requirement that for juried photo-competitions images are often required to be derived from a single exposure.

 

As far as Dave's POW, I would agree with some of the comments that the sky in this instance is probably too dark in comparison to the land, but that's something that can be adjusted. The dark mountains on the horizon aren't a problem for me - try (carefully) looking towards the sun next time you're watching a sunset and see how much detail you can see in more distant objects in that direction. The dark rock on the right is more distracting, but seems to have enough detail that it could be could be brought up to a satisfactory level. Maybe a different grad would have been better, maybe not, but having much more of the area around the sun blown out would certainly have been a much bigger problem. In summary, I don't think the approach taken was problematic enough problem to warrant the heavy-handed criticism it has received from some, and the positive aspects like that great foreground and colour contrast between the land and water, with a few simple adjustments certainly make this a keeper for me.

 

On a more general note, I always find it puzzling that some consider the use of uncoloured ND filters as an excecssive modification of the scene, but have no problem with for example the selective burning and dodging that often goes into producing an optimal print, or with the use of coloured filters in black and white photography. It's equally puzzling to me that high saturation displays are described as unnatural looking, but black and white prints are not.

 

The discussion raised about images like this not falling in the 'high value' category is interesting, but confounded by marketing issues unrelated to image quality. I'm also not convinced that some photographers, who object to the featureless dark regions in an image like this, would be any more satisfied assigning it 'artistic' credibility if the technology were available to record the full dynamic range, since a colourful sunset (natural or otherwise) appears to be an automatically disqualifying component for some. Finally, how 'good' the image is, for me has little to do with what Dave is trying to achieve. When I see an image, the experience is quite divorced from the photographer's intentions and aspirations.

Micheal... "Photography is about capturing images and manipulation of color, contrast, etc. Ansel Adams was a master of it!"

 

Landscape photography is about capturing nature as it is shown to us. I have never heard a description of it as a manipulation. Ansel shot in B+W and while his images were dodged and burned a bunch they images still portrayed the beauty of the scene and that beauty was never over powered by the alterations. At least that's the way I see it. IMO Ansel showed us the pure beauty of a landscape. He manipulated to make up for the dynamic range a camera looses. He altered to show the beauty that was unavailable with the medai at the time, not make up for an image that was lacking.

Richard van Hoesel has very eloquently expressed the same overall feelings I have about this eye-catching landscape shot, particularly his viewpoint regarding the techniques/tools used to obtain it relative to methods used in "classical" film photography for decades. While it's not my personal favorite in your large and very impressive collection of beautiful Alaskan landscape shots, it is nevertheless, IMO, a very fine and very eye-catching image, as are a great many others in your portfolio. It has also generated a lot of discussion, and that, after all, is one of the goals in selecting images for POW. IMO, the Elves have done well.

The 'technology' to record a scene like this has existed for a long time - colour negative film would easily record detail throughout this kind of scene. To be sure this technology brings its own challenges but it is capable of rendering a much more realistic scene once these challenges have been mastered. I think it's only due to some quirk of the publishing world (now mostly moot) that high contrast, high saturation transparency film became the norm for recording this kind of scene.

"It's equally puzzling to me that high saturation displays are described as unnatural looking, but black and white prints are not."

 

I thought about it and the reason might be easy to pinpoint. How many portraits have we seen shot on Velvia?

 

Not that i don't like saturated color, i got used to it - gradually.

It's hard not to see the trend, over the years people fell in love with Velvia and it's palette, perhaps because it captures a "better" world. Digital era, at first was trying desperately to perfect "velvia actions" but with time went further. Regards, P.

Eric, yes but a rather noisy technology compared to the fine-grained positive films (and high end digitals) that are available, and probably used by many landscape photographers for that reason too.

I think I concur Richard that I could live with the dark mountains in the upper portion of the image. By themselves they look fairly natural and acceptable for a sunset. I would also be quite happy with the bright detailed foreground elements here, as many others have expressed. However, the problem lies when the two are put together. There is disharmony -an unnatural blockage- so to speak here that could have been avoided. And yes while a dodging of the the upper half of the scene, and slightly burning the lower portion would certainly help bring these elements together, unfortunately, Dave decided on neither and instead posted it as we see it. So while the image does have some very desirable elements to its credit, the pieces do not quite fit together as we see it here in my minds eye. It's been a nice discussion though. Hopefully we have learned a thing or two along the way.

Richard - "It's equally puzzling to me that high saturation displays are described as unnatural looking, but black and white prints are not."

 

That's simple Richard. We don't see B+W so in reality black and white is unnatural looking from the get go. That's my guess at least.

 

When you get down to it Velvia captures nothing close to the actual scene as far as saturation goes. I have shot enough with it now to realize that it gives a "willy wonka" type view to the surroundings. The density slope of the film and nice natural blending of those over saturated colors makes it look 'natural' in a sense. That is why I usually like scenes like this one in Film but don't like it when it's shot digitally (Please remember people I am a HUGE digital advocate - This is NOT a digital vs. Film debate). Enhanced colors don't have the natural break tha Velvia does. Photoshop (or whatever program) does a great job on images but it just doesn't have that certain quality for saturation that film does and very often has a very unnatural color slope to it and contrasting colors don't blend well like film. Digital has a long way to go before it will rival Velvia in this aspect IMO.

 

I swear the Canon D-30 use to capture images that could be over saturated naturally and IMO rivaled film for complex color capture. Of course everyone complained about it and they cut it back in all subsequent models. I might get a D30 just to futz around with again.

Richard - Certainly colour negative film has more grain than transparencies - but a properly exposed and scanned negative along with a little noise reduction (and there are plenty of good tools for this these days) can yield large, very satisfying prints - at least from large chunks of film. The problem of grain is perhaps less than conventional wisdom in some circles suggests. But at any rate, as with everything in photography, there are trade-offs (I personally find the challenge of getting the color balance right more troublesome than grain) and we each get to decide which trade-off is more important to us.

 

And I'm not at all opposed to the use of saturation and high contrast per se. I just think too often it is used to sensationalize rather than illuminate. And worse yet, I think in many cases it has simply come to be expected or taken as normal.

 

We have more options now than we've ever had. So I hope Dave K and others take the time to explore these options and make their own choices. And perhaps to think long and hard about why they are making the photographs they make.

I'm affraid I've got to agree with everything Michael Seewald and Scott Eaton said. This picture looks as if it had been taken out of a (bad and hopefully soon censored) Photoshop manual. Whereas I really love the foreground at right - which I hope Dave made a close-up of, on a separate frame -, this picture might look pretty at first sight, but rather ridiculous once you start really looking at it with open human eyes.

 

As if reality could ever look like this...

 

Does a picture necessarily need to depict reality ? NO !! And I'm not against PS - using it and over-using it myself -, but this, to me, shows exactly what you should never do using this software... My verdict: a decent execution of a very poor vision.

 

Sorry Dave. I'm harsh on this one, especially with you, because you have MUCH MUCH MUCH better pictures in your collection.

 

Only the foreground right looks great; the entire frame as a whole looks close enough to an Elvis + black velvet combination imo...

 

Perhaps this is the right time and place to remember that good visual art is supposed to bring about some " UNITY " within a frame... There can be no unity in a frame where the sky and the sea can't co-exist at the same time on the same planet, and where the light doesn't even match from foreground to mid-ground to background.

I think most of us as photographers agree the result, as presented, is unconvincing of what a real scene could possibly look like. However, my view is that the in-camera technique is not as bad as some posts make out. With more work, I think a more believable portrayal of the scene can be recovered. Whether that's what Dave intends, only he can say.

seem to have lost my attachment on my last post...

As long as we are speaking of unreal-looking photos, this one is most worthy of note. I have never seen anything like this in my life, but it is absolutely spectacular, in my opinion:

 

http://www.photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=3141759

 

What a portfolio, Dave!

 

--Lannie

Richard, that is the best reconstruction I have seen yet, but I can only view it after uploading a comment with a picture and then clicking on "Return to forum thread."

 

I sure wish that the Elves would fix that quirk in the system.

 

--Lannie

I have no doubt this photograph could be edited to be more believable. But here's the thing - a seemingly large number of people really LOVE it the way it is - I think precisely because it is not very believable. I do wonder what it means that so many seem to prefer a pretty fantasy...