Sunrise- Sunshine Beach QLD

Jake this is stunning work! very beautiful!

Critique appreciated, first time using grads.

Your use of the GND filter looks perfect to me, and with some especially contrasty lighting that probably added some difficulty. Very pretty photo! I love the blues in the water.

I am not familiar with the kind of filter that you used but great shot. the colors are very striking! 7/7

Beautiful! Great job

Photo would not have worked as well without the grad ND as the lighting balance is pretty good here. Nice dof and sharpness. Colors of the foreground rocks, ocean and sky hold my attention. Beautifully done.

Jake,

 

No doubt that grads were needed and this is a wonderful composition. I'd suggest that it might be a just a touch overdone w/ them.

 

Thankfully this can be mostly be resolved in Photoshop. The foreground seems to be too bright in compared to the setting sun, and the top clouds are particularly dark (the biggest evidence of grad use).

 

I created some layers and darkened the foregound, and then added some light into the top clouds w/ a masked layer. Then toned down the blue saturation and bumped up red and yellow a touch.

 

Hopefully this is helpful.

 

 

PS what this type of image screams for is a "reverse" ND Grad... see on this page: http://www.singh-ray.com/grndgrads.html

Thanks to all who have commented.

 

That's a great help Christian and is really really appreciated. Constructive critism is exactly why I've come to photo.net The foreground is actually my fault as I've pulled about 1/2-2/3rds of a stop of light out of it during processing. I'll definately try and keep an eye on tonal transition from now on. Thanks again for being so honest and helpful.

Do you normally get cloud formations like this in your mid/late spring?

It's actually quite rare to get good cloud formations at any time of year here on the Sunshine Coast, it's either overcast or clear 90% of the time. The cloud you see here is the remnants of a storm. October to March is our storm season where troughs are pushed from Inland Australia and over the east coast. You either love the storm season or hate it, I'm one who loves it and have done long before getting a camera, only now have I realised that it's also a perfect time to make pictures.

An exciting and remarkably dramatic image, with stunning sharpness, clarity and light. Superb.