Seastack--Scroll to Diff Crop

Another very nice B/W. It seems a bit contrasty, but it could be my monitor since your others have looked great. At first I thought there was a person middle right (by what appear to be two seagulls), but on closer exaam it looks like it could be an eagle.

I like the composition. I do feel the contrast in the foreground and the stack is a little strong with a lack of midtones. The sky looks good. The other thing that bothers me a bit is that the reflection of the sky is brighter than the real stack and the sky. This could be due to the blending process. Other than that, this is a strong image.

--P

I think the person-looking creature is a great blue heron.  

I have another version of this with less contrast, and I thought I toned down the highlights in the water, but I'll comb through that area one more time.  Look for a repost tomorrow.

Hi Marylynne, I think the B/W conversion here works very well - the bottom of the stack (for me not a problem as such) is much darker than the reflection of the bottom of the stack which for me then doesn't work so well. I would be tempted to put more contrast into the reflections if a 'contrasty' finish is the effect you are going for.  There is lots of structure in the sky to play with so that i think there is some chance to pull in some darker tones on the right side off the image in both sky and reflection which would I think enhance the overall 'moodeness' of the image and would mean the eye would not be pulled so strongly to the top left corner.  Great composition.
Cheers, Mark

I like this a lot, Marylynne. The seagull is a nice touch. I like the processing. Looks good to me except just for the dark areas in the seastack.  

Hi Marylynne,
I love the compostion and the reflection here. I think you've nailed that. I guess I agree with the others regarding the contrast. It's a bit intense on the stack and I would love to see some more detail there and maybe a little lightening of the foreground. The sky is spot on and the gull is a really nice touch. Great capture! :)

Great composition but ditto what has already been said about contrast. I also have been venturing into BW and what I like might not be your preference. To me, too many of the shadows appear blocked. Some blocked shadows are OK but too much can hurt the mood. Also the midtones need to be lightened some. Some images can obviously be short on midtones which makes it difficult to process the image without it appearing too contrasty, maybe that's the case here it's hard to tell. I think the highlights could use a boost also. If the brightest spot on the right horizon gets too bright cropping it out probably wouldn't hurt or bring it back down selectively. I might try to balance the tones somewhat in Silver Efex then develope mood with some Glamour Glow since you have the NIK Suite. I usually leave in just a hint of color with the opacity slider in the BW layer...not enough to see at a glance but just an ever so subtle touch, I often find this helps create a little more depth and can also add contrast in a slightly different way, not just lighter and darker. I do like it as presented but I would keep working it. Not my typical critique but this is such a great shot those would be my thought processes if it were mine. I hope my comments weren't too heavy handed. Have a great weekend.
 

For me the image is about the reflection, wich looks very good.   I think if you can make the upper part of the image appear with the same or slightly lighter contrast then it's a clear winner. It's just too dark for me on top.  

Thanks everyone!  There is a lot of exposure opportunity for me in this one since it is a 3 exposure blend in Photomatix before being converted to BW in Nik. There is no such thing as heavy-handed feedback.  I am interested in every suggestion.  I haven't really experimented with keeping a tish of color, and this one could work well that way, so I might tinker with that a bit, but I didn't do that here.  This image is actually pretty smashing in color (feel free to look at the gallery), but I wanted to play with it in BW.  It could be that its textural complexity, combined with the foreground reflection and rocks, etc. makes in hard to really unify in BW.  Just a theory.

What I did here: reduced overall contrast, lifted the mid tones, changed white and black points a bit, and use the LR adjustment brush to reduce highlights in the reflection and reduce the overall darkness of that top right corner.

Let me know if this is an improvement, and feel free to say it's not and make other suggestions.  I learn best through feedback, so feel free to keep it coming.

I think the repost is a fine improvement. you may be on to something with the textural complexity and all that. I have one with similar tones and textures that I can seem to find a sweet spot.
 

The repost is definitely a fine improvement, Marylynne. I think you pretty much nailed it.

I think a lot of us here who did darkroom printing in the past can attest to the fact that we would go through a series of 'work prints', varying contrast through exposure and development and burn/dodge, before the expressive print was finally realized. Today, it's not much different: We proceed through various incarnations of an image until we arrive at the "This is it!" moment.

--P

Yep, way better.  Seems you have a lot of data to work with and that's a very nice thing.

I lke your contrasty conversion, but the comp. feels a little left heavy.  Not sure if that was possible, as the reflection would move away from between the rocks.

Repo looks spot on, very nice!

Thanks everyone.

Harry: I thought I would try a slightly different crop.  I did have a little more room on the left, but there were a bunch of random rocks that didn't add much, so I cropped a tish there.  Here I cut another thin slice (pumpkin pie lingo lingering) off the right. 

Please let me know if this feels better.  I cannot thank all of you enough for all the help you are providing as I work on this black and white project.
Muchas gracias, mi amigos!

Sorry...this looks huge, but its just 1200 long side.