Sunset Over the Cooper

Any thoughts or comments are greatly appreciated!

Very nice, vibrant image. The colour really caught my eye. Good framing as well having the bridge enter and exit not at the corners and having the closest support near the right 3rd of the image.

amazing composition, and very rich color range!

Great!

Ciao

Domenico

Now this is nice... Wish it had a little more sharpness, but exposure is right one..

Thanks for the comments--I appreciate them all!

 

Dennis--Is the sharpness something I can correct in PS? I admit I'm ignorant on any type of post processing. All I did was took this image in RAW, converted it to a JPEG with no changes, resized, and posted it. So, there is no sharpening anywhere in that process. I need to learn to spot the "needs" of my pictures (things like lack of sharpness) and correct them in PS. My eye is still not sharp enough to look at a picture and say "Oh, that needs to be sharpened" or "That is over-sharpened." So, I appreciate an outside, objective opinion. Thanks for your comment.

Tyler, i have a photo of this same bridge in my portfolio, but it is even less sharp than this! (timed exposure coming over the bridge, its in my single photos section).

 

I believe i am seeing a fair bit of motion blur, though its hard to tell because of my screen resolution. To correct, you would need a tripod to hold the camera steady and then use mirror lockup function (in the custom functions of the camera) and the timer. That is the best way to get as little motion blur as possible. Remember to turn off the mirror lockup when you are done to avoid hurting the shutter curtains though... The sharpening that you are referring to will help only marginally here, and will most likely only create noise and not make the picture any sharper anyway. The PS sharpening is something that the canon supplied program digital photo professional can do, as can acro soft photo studio 5 which are both supplied with the XT. The canon program i use 99.9% of the time, though the sharpening system is pretty bad; but its simple. Basically, on most of my images i will sharpen until i see a reason not to, a sign. Unless its an image i want to appear with as little noise as possible, like this one. A sign that an image is over sharpened would be excessive noise/grainyness, artifacts, and halo-ing. My suggestion is to take a picture, sharpen it 100%, see what happens and you'll see pretty quick what im talking about. Then back off until all of the bad things disappear. I have some over sharpened pictures in my portfolio i never bothered to take down, i may post a couple here if you'd like

 

I like this photo a lot. Good colors and descent composition. I'd be tempted to rotate it a little bit to the right to level the horizon, though that would add more negative space on the left side of the photo above the bridge, i think it would help it to feel a little bit more natural. Take it for what its worth though.

Sunsets are pretty much dime a dozen, but this is priceless. Great job!

William--I really appreciate your comments. One thing I've tried to do is find some way to set my shots apart from the "dime a dozen" sunsets. A nice touch I've discovered is mixing artificial and natural light around dusk with exposures in the 4-30 second range, as I did with this shot. Thanks for your kind thoughts and support!

This is a perfect sunset with wonderful use of colours! All my compliments. Bye, Maury

Are you using a tripod? I have to assume you are using something, unless you have rock steady arms ;o)There are a couple of things that can help. My favorite is using a dulpicate layer and then run a High Pass Filter. Here is a link that gives the details. One thing that might be happening here, is the bridge is actually moving. A real long esposure MIGHT show the bridge flexing and such due to traffic... A long shot but a lot of little things can add up.

Dennis--Yes, I am using a tripod and have a good one ($400 professional model). However, I work pretty fast and know that sometimes I will change my exposure compensation and hit my remote release before I let the camera recover from my touch. Furthermore, I do sometimes hand hold some ND Grad filters, so I could have bumped something doing that. Your thought about the bridge flexing is an interesting one. I'm not sure how much is flexes but it's a thought. I must say though, when I look at the unresized version of this the bridge and cables are much, much sharper. I shrunk this shot down for posting and never changed the sharpness before or after shrinking so what we're seeing could be the shrinking process without resharpening. Thanks for your comments!

Tyler, even with the touch of softness, this is a superb image; both as a landscape and as an architectural image! Definitely get into the habit of sharpening your image as the last step before creating the JPEG file. You'll be very pleased with the results. You have really improved a lot, Amigo! Keep up the great work. Cheers! Chris

Hope you don't mind... Here's a High Pass Filter layer applied to sharpen. The results would be even better with the original.

Very nice Dennis! Not only do I not "mind," I am very appreciative of people like yourself using your knowledge about post-processing to show me what my shots can look like. Thanks so much for all your help! If I decide to print this one I might consult you for some help touching up the original, if you don't mind.

Great shot here Tyler - I'd add more, but the commentary upthread really is a good summary of the pros and cons regarding various nuances. I would definitely be interested in trekking out some day to capture this...wet feet, bug bites, and other perils aside. Where did you do your approach from?

 

Anyway, by all means, let's carve out a day/time to go out there. Wouldn't mind catching a shot like this myself! :)

 

P.S. Check your website...

Beautiful bridge spanning across the sunset sky & waters.

it all depends on how long an exposure we are talking about here. this bridge moves and was designed to do so. however my normal sharpening is the unsharp mask filter in CS2 at about 80% - radius .8 - threshold 0. I find that if that doesn't do it, the image is sadly lost to blur. you may want to check your JPEG compression settings for the optimized option. As stated above, if your camera has mirror lock-up or prefire, then most certainly use it. if there is stiff wind, then you may want to wait as that will buffet the bridge over time. you've got the spot and the technique down to almost perfection. i'd be interested what the RAW file looks like without JPEG artifacts.

 

my prayers are with the families of the fallen firefighters in Charleston. saddness for sure.

 

take care my friend, J.K.

JK--Thanks for the comment and the concerns over the Charleston community. I was actually on my way to take pictures last night at this same location when I was going over the bridge and realized the sun was being completely obscured by a plume of black smoke. I followed it and actually watched them fight the blaze for about an hour. It was odd because there was no sense of panic, no people running around, everything seemed under complete control but I don't think anyone in the huge crowd that assembled knew what the guys fighting the fire knew. I found out today that one of our faculty members in the orthopaedic surgery department is the brother-in-law of Rusty Thomas, who is the Charleston Fire Department Chief. He and his family were pretty rattled by things. They could definitely use your prayers, but I'm certain they are needed even more by the nine families that lost sons/fathers/husbands/etc. If you don't mind, I might email you the original RAW file for this shot, JK. I certainly don't expect you to do anything to it but I respect your opinion greatly and since this image has generated much discussion I'd be interested in hearing a more seasoned opinion of the original file. If the sharpness is there, I think this one would be popular if I ever get my images in some local shops. I have been trying to reshoot this scene but have had no luck...we've had 2 straight weeks of colorless sunsets so all I have to show for my efforts is wet feet from walking in the marsh and more mosquito bites than someone lost for a week in the Amazon!

Wow, Tyler!! This is fabulous. I've been away too long. You've got some fabulous night shots added to your portfolio! Great work!!