Tendrils of Fury

Cascading water on the rock platforms with morning storms in the distance.

You've got to be kidding me!! This is fantastic. Amazing interest throughout, all the lines in the water lead deep into the frame-the color of the water against the sky. Excellent image.

This photo is really, really GREAT!

 

A magical image. Well done, Margo.

Suggestive and great image!

Great perspective, lots of detail, and very well rendered. Nice work!

I see that you did have a difficult job here. But you did manage well. The sky is not the best, but the foreground makes the balance. Thank you for sharing. Kani Polat

perfect exposure and technique, brilliant tones and colors, amazing scenery. a masterpiece!

A wonderful set of well timed wave action and a great composition but you handed ownership of this one to the computer. Far to much photoshop, but if that was your intention then great. I just think it's gone way too far.

David as always I can trust you to give a blunt assessment even if it goes against the 'popular' opinion. I realise there is a certain unreal look to the overall shot but there was no particular effort to create the otherworldly aspects to this. I used 1 stop of extra grad over what I might have normally done to give the sky more punch and allow a brighter exposure for the black foreground rocks. Can you be more specific about which areas you consider overdone? I've attached the image with RAW on auto setting in ACR, nothing done in Photoshop. My processing in the original image consisted of highlight and shadow recovery, colour correction for the blue cast and vibrance/saturation.

Your image here is amazing. How did you go about approaching this image, composition wise?

When I say things like 'too much photoshop' I am always hoping for a detailed response to which I thank you (cheers for posting the second image). I also know you won't see it as a stab in the heart for starters and start a pathetic online vendetta. I am provoking, yes, but lets say I am the balanced opposite of all the gushing superlatives that are endlessly banded around online.

 

Kriticism - On a second look I will still up hold this is a cracking composition and wave action to die for, but the elements that leaned me towards my bluntness still stand - the saturation, colour cast and excessive 'darkness' of the sky. To me it just looks like photoshop flexing, over processing especially in the sky tones / colours and the sea saturation / colours. Whatever you do to get a desired emotional response is an extension of your style, and its always well received, but my senses find this compelling composition pointing the wrong direction, which to me feels disappointing considering the magnitude of the action going on. How you achieved the end result, using grads as you have highlighted, seems to deliver me the same questionable feeling, so lets just say that whatever you used to get the effect seems excessive.

 

General Thoughts - The biggest problem I am having these days with digital pictures is the severe amounts of superficiality that I 'feel'. I dont care why I feel it but when I do I react. It has become a major issue for me lately because I feel it's not necessary in digital photography and can be avoided easily, but oooh isnt it tempting..... to turn that bland weekend sunset into yet another 'Clearing Storm'. I really hope we look back and laugh at this decade as the naive years of unnecessary digital manipulation.

 

Photography Magazines - Overprocessing is all thanks to photography magazines 'Turn this.... into THIS' tutorials. It drives me spare, you should see me shouting my head off in WHSmiths. Me and my friend Alan are always taking the piss, we call it 'home-baking', "wait til I get home and cook up this beauty" etc etc.

 

Closing thoughts - I should just turn away, and after this post I will keep my thoughts to myself, because it doesn't do me any good. Critiquing images in general is now far too political; there's truth in there somewhere but where oh where..... Its easy to shout people down online, spend hours sparring... Thats why I disappeared from NPN, as all it seemed to do is get me into conflict.

 

Thanks for reading this.

 

 

Randy, I had shot this location a couple of times in poor conditions so I knew what I wanted. The rock platforms take up a lot of space in the composition. Without good water action over them they look like black slabs - not very interesting. My aim was to get water rushing over them. Timing was the key : the tide had to be low enough to safely stand in this position and I needed to get a wave rushing over the platform with some action in the ocean as well. The two pools in the foreground were important in breaking up the blocky looking rock platform too. I placed most of the key elements according to the rule of thirds. The other decision was the height of the tripod to determine what sort of rock/ocean/sky ratio I wanted.

David thanks for your detailed and condsidered response. Although it may be impolite to disagree with a critique, I do not think this image is an example of photoshop flexing. Personally I do not think the presentation is very far off what I experienced, Was the sky dark? Yes, those are storm clouds. Although I did not process this deliberately to be over the top I did take some artistic licence in darkening the clouds somewhat relative to the foreground. My philosophy with colour casts - generally I leave them alone. They are natural and their removal often results in a washed-out appearance. In this case I removed some of the blueness to allow the warm tones in the sky and aquamarine water to shine. If I were to enter a competition, I would reduce the darkness at the edges of the cloud to make it more 'correct' but personally I am happy with the dramatic over graded look here. The fact is that there was not much photoshopping in this case and I think it is a far cry from those shots you talk about in the magazines or those souped up HDR's I see all to often on flickr and this site too. A more Photoshop intensive image is this one which we have discussed in the past

http://photo.net/photodb/photo?photo_id=5771227

 

You probably know that I am not threatened by sincere discussion about my work otherwise you would not have bothered. I welcome it. It makes me look at my own work more carefully. When I re-appraise this image I can see how aspects may seem excessive but it's also not so far off from what I experienced on that stormy morning with dark blue skies, pink in a clearing between them, the green Southern ocean and huge waves belting the hell out of the coastiline.

I can't see this photoshopped over the top or being unnatural and I'm happy to get some technical info how this was made. Thank you for that :) I wish you top landscape photographers would share more how you make your photos.. but of course you have your little secrets ;)

 

Very beautiful shot. Upper corners are bit dark, but otherwise it's perfect. =)

Hello Kah Kit. The favorable attributes of your image command attention. This one stopped me in my tracks. The negatives are debatable and the over use of Photoshop is also inspiring some spirited discussion. I empathize with David's assessment regarding over cooking at the computer in general, but I don't concur in this case. What I see here is more an over-grad situation which has rendered this top heavy exposure-wise. I think your results could have been optimized by using less grad or even none at all. A bracketed exposure for the sky blended in would have done the trick. We all know that RAW files are not true representations of how a scene appeared, hence the name raw, which means un-cooked. Therefore, we have to expect and accept the various creative liberties of the cooking process. For me, that is an extension of the creative process. How much is the topic. What you have done by adjusting the white balance to mitigate the overly blue cast is no different than using a warming filter for film capture, a technique utilized by many of the masters in their day. I think the warming effect it had on the sky is more in question, but it may have indeed appeared this way. If we refrain from rendering the scene as how we remember it, then we are assuming the camera got it right. Until I saw the RAW file, I did not suspect any excessive manipulation. Meanwhile, after seeing the RAW capture, I didn't see any far reaching adjustments that I wouldn't have done myself. I commend David for his openness of opinion. For those of us who care, I think his views are what harness the over use of creative tools. At the same time, I believe we have to extend an open mind to creative differences. We could all just switch to jpeg output and let the cameras take care of the processing, or we can infuse our own individual creative ingredients to complete the process. I prefer the latter.

Amazing

 

***Ali***

I very like this photo!

Great photo, great RAW, great adjustments, great composition and tones.

It goes to my favourites!