'Puget Sound, Washington State, Late Spring Afternoon'

Washington State's Puget Sound is a giant inlet that brings cold

ocean water around the giant Olympic Mountain range into big

portions of inland western and northern Washington but keeping it

protected from ocean elements while keeping the ocean's coldness,

making Seattle and Tacoma ideal seaports, It is a recreational

boater's paradise, with beaches mostly mud or pebbles with few of

sand because of no or little wave action, and it's a boater's and

fisherman's paradise. Your ratings, critiques and observations are

invited and most welcome. If you rate harshly, very critically, or wish

to make a remark, please submit a helpful and constructive

comment; please share your photographic knowledge to help

improve my photography. Thanks! Enjoy! john

If you notice a defect in this image or two, please note that I have substituted images -- I marked the wrong image for upload and substituted.

If you looked even in thumbnail the wrong image in your browser it may become cached there with errors and all, so you may have to clear your browser's cache to view this image without the error; my apologies.

The change also may have to work its way through Photo.net's several servers which is apparently has not at this writing, but I cannot be certain, as the changes often are made at different times for different servers I have divined.

john

John (Crosley)

Please try to reedit the original file, because this is very badly over processed. The subject and  composition is very good, I like it very much. But, the processing is bad. Really bad.

The sky is very noisy and posterized in you original first image you posted last night, the foreground shore line is better here, but the sun soft blur is badly posterized here too. I regularly shooting against the sun and many time included in the composition, but the sun, regardless how bright, it is gradually fading into the sky or the clouds. The depth of field is well chosen, the long logs look very good. It would be a very nice b&w image with a proper processing.

I wish I can help you to teach you how to process an image like this. (over 50 years of photography) 

If you have an unprocessed image and send me a resonable size of image, I my able to demonstrate to you, how to process this image, by step by step.

Cheers.

Yours is a wonderful, warm and most helpful critique -- the kind I wish more gave and were capable of giving.  It is warmly received.

I made the mistake I find in thinking I could process this image from an in-camera JPEG instead of the NEF which is what I should have done -- that would have required waiting for some download space for all the chip's files which I didn't have, so I just downloaded a JPEG and had at it -- a mistake as we both can see.

I will have at it again, and note also that the version with 'mistakes' is stuck in my browser, or I have a version with mistakes in it that does not show in my viewing software on my laptop.  I have made numerous attempts to replace the image, but to no avail -- worse because I uploaded from a supermarket Wi-Fi, not once but five or six times, as I'm traveling.

And I will be traveling for some time, complicating matters and also without a decent desktop monitor -- just a smaller laptop one, though the color rendition appear pretty top-notich (if you're sitting at just the correct angle to the screen -- directly in front and at a right angle).

Compare to Apple's lenticular screen monitors which I often see and view my photos on in retailers' stores, where one can view from various directions and see the same colors without shifting and the same tones as well. 

Ah well, those who have money get somewhat of an advantage -- I have two monitors that are top notch in another country but not with me traveling -- and an Airline lost some very valuable things when they lost my luggage on the trip here, and it seems likely it won't be found now after a month or so.

I very much appreciate your critique and your offer.  I'll try it myself with the 'raw' file, and see what I can do, though it will take some time.

Thanks sooooo much for the kind effort.

john

John (Crosley)

John, I think shooting into the sun is one of the most difficult challenges for digital cameras, one of the few areas where film is clearly superior.  The light on the logs and water is great, but the sky is hurting.  If it can't be fixed, I'd suggest cropping out the light source and just go with the lower portions of the sky -- I think that would still be a very effective image (maybe even more so).

You're absolutely right.

Film with its varying abilities under varying developing temps and developing times has far greater tonal range than any sensor made today unless one engages in High Dynamic Range photography, but here I did not have a tripod which is essential for HDR photography. 

I will try almost anything, and with a rather thinnish coastal cloud cover typical of warmish days over the Puget Sound, I thought I'd give it a try.

Different degrees of contrast/brightness caused different diameters of burn for the sun's brightness, as this certainly is not the orb of the sun but the orb of its brightness.

You have a good suggestion, but I think next time I do this, I'll try it with HDR if I'm shooting digital, and then I'll be able to master the manipulation (or not, depending of course on the learning curve, as I've never done HDR before!)

Thanks for the helpful advice. 

I'm just stupid or crazy enough to attempt almost any shooting situation, no matter what, and damn the consequences and the 'well-known' rules that may apply, and sometimes I come up with stunning results -- though seldom.

This is one attempt.

In other ways, the composition seems to 'work' at least for some, whereas I thought the 'driftwood snag' posted just after would be more popular which surprises me, since that photo has oodles of texture.

Best wishes Stephen, and thanks.

john

John (Crosley)