Predawn at Cape Bon Ami

I didn't like this one at first and shoved it into the "no good"

pile. The dark areas bother me, and still do. Velvia is great for the

colours be not so good for the shadows. I took this shot thinking

it'd be good as a panorama. This is pretty much the crop I visualized

in the field.

 

This is the prelude to a glorious sunrise. Shooting in this area near

the summer solstice was not the smartest thing to do. Sunrise:

4:10am. Wake up time: 2:30am.

Well cropped! and very nice colors

don't waste too much time in the shadows. This is a great shot

Sometimes we are too close to our images to think clearly. This is an awesome image, Kenneth. I am going to try and crop this somewhat as there is not much else that could be done with such a fabulous image. I feel like I'm erasing one of Picasso's pencil sketches here but I will forge ahead.

 

I couldn't bear to lose much of the stepped stone area in the foreground. Just a bit to diminish its enormous weight. That leaves the sky which is gorgeous but fairly monochromatic from about 60% of the way up. This will also lessen the mass of the cliff on the right. There is nothing else I can even conceive of doing. I only hope I haven't done too much. Thanks for showing us this image.

I second the previous comments. This has great color and is a stunning photo, and the dark areas are not a big deal. Nice work.

This is an excellent image and I am going to hate myself for distroying it by cropping. The mood is so nice and expsosure is right on the moeny. Love the compostion and color too. I haven't done crazy thing like getting up 3am to take pictures for a long long times now. The last time I remember getting up at 5am to take picture was in June this year when I visited Bryce Canyon. That is why I prefer to take sunrise picture around Sept/Oct when the sun comes up 8am in Canada. Anyway, I have looked at this wonderful image for a long time and tried different crop to make it 'better'. Yes, I agree that the dark spot is a bit too big and heavy for me too. Thus, this is my cropped version which is quite subtle and preserve most of the rocky beach.

I have looked at the cropped shots given by others, but still like your original best. I do not think the dark areas are either too weighty or too dark. I like the light and texture in the dark areas, and without them the scene is almost too saccharine. I'd get up at 3am to get a shot like this one! Great job!

I love this one very much: fantastic colours, with suberb subtle highlights on the cliff, and the front stones. I only wish I could see more of the pinky / orangy clouds...

Cheers, Alex

I think the photo is fine the way it is, although some of the cropped versions are nice as well. I guess theres a lot to be said about the early bird getting the worm. If this was your "no good" pile, it owuld be amazing to see your best work.

 

Thanks for your help with black points and other comments.

 

Take Care, Tony

as dawn breaks, the shoreline lifts a dark and sleepy head to the new day. I enjoyed the balance of light. well done. I can feel the stillness as the sun begins to rise. This is a keeper

First of all, a word about this troublesome "originality" criteria... If we see this as just another seashore shot, well, then it isn't original. But if we compare this to these other shore shots, then it has SOME originality. What's original to me is the stony formation in the foreground - I've never seen that before actually. But more importantly, how you used this foreground in the image is quite unusual, I think...

Good or bad foreground ? Good of course, but I somehow feel that the composition isn't perfect just yet. Looking at the bottom left corner, the edge of this stony formation receives purple light from the setting sun, and I feel you have maybe not capitalized fully on this. This great portion of the image is here in the corner, and it would have deserved more emphasis, I feel.

At the same time, the foreground is very dominent due to your lens and your angle... So, if that was your decision, I feel there is a little contradiction here. If the foreground is important, why crop its curve so early...? Maybe there was something uggly just at the bottom of this frame, I don't know, but if not, I'd tend to think that you should have enclosed more foreground at the bottom. We would then have the complete curve of the shore's outline, and at the same time, the purple color will be better emphasized.

In that sense, I also feel that I miss the purple reflections on the water, which I see starting on the left... The stones at the back of the stony formation at the extreme right do nothing for this image imo. So, I'd give up on them, and and include more of the sea on the left - to get more purple reflections.

Finally, with camera a bit further back, a bit more space included at the bottom and a bit more space included left, the top of the sky will suddenly be worth clos to nothing, and a crop would do the image some good at that stage - leaving us with a more panoramic format.

In the present image, I also feel there is a bit too much sky, as nothing special is happening up there - no clouds, no specially nice colors; but I don't have something really stunning in front, so you might as well not crop too much of it... But the essence of this shot, to me, was the magic of the foreground, and nothing else, and it seems you have somehow partly failed to give this foreground the importance it deserved to have...

Just an opinion again, of course, and moreover an opinion from somebody who doesn't shoot much landscapes - as you know...

I found it very interesting to analyze this image. I hope the above will be of some interest to you as well. Best regards.

I can't imagine putting this into a "no good" pile! This is very beautiful and the dark spots are not a problem. To me there is nothing bad about dark to light variation in the same shot. I think it adds that "drama" that Fred was talking about. This one is sumptuous.

Have you considered pre-exposure? It might work on a shot like this, although there is a lot of shadow area. Next time, why not try one with and one without.

When you say, "Velvia is great for the colours be not so good for the shadows," I don't know if I would agree. Even in this photo, the rich, dark tones show up well. Velvia is a great film for shadow detail and I would rely on it more than any other film for capturing detail in the shadows. For more, you can read what Ken Rockwell has to say about it at his web site: www.kenrockwell.com -- great site and a great photographer.

 

Load up your camera with Velvia, stick it on a tripod, expose it for the highlights, and be blown away!

I would tend to agree with Marcs critique.

The color and tone are great, but the strength of the image lies in the forground. We need more of it to pull us in and make the image flow.

In it's current form it is truncated and my visual path slams into it hard and stops. Perhaps there was something that kept you from including more of it to complete the flow of the image. Only you know what was up here.