I'd just like to extend a personal "thank you" to everyone who provided advice to me for my Big Sur trip last week, especially David Gubernick...who went beyond the call of duty for assisting an NPN member and took me on a personal tour!
I'm posting a few images below and would love your critiques, keeping the following assumptions in mind:
1. Yes - some of my shots (like McWay Falls) are quite ordinary and will not likely generate any artistic enthusiasm by this group having seen that perspective a million times. That said, this was my first time seeing some of these beautiful places, and sometimes the image that has been replicated so many times before is the one which will look best hanging in my office as a reminder of a trip. I also had to work during the day and was limited to locations I could scout on the Internet and during the early evening before sunset. That said, I'm very much looking forward to coming back when I have more time to explore.
2. This was my very first attempt at landscape photography near the ocean. I'm typically capturing something like fall colors in the mountains of Colorado with aspen leaves changing over the course of several days. In Big Sur, the rise and fall of the tide combined with coastal winds I'm not used to, more sensor debris than I've ever encountered, etc. made for a very fun yet somewhat humbling time. In other words, I'm used to photographing trees and peaks at 10,000 feet, not cliffs and waves at 100 feet! It didn't help that despite growing up farming and having been an Eagle Scout, I still got poison oak :)
3. These images are basically straight out of the camera. I've got a full schedule this summer and likely won't be able to give them the processing they deserve for several months, but couldn't hold back my excitement and appreciation until then. I figure that the critique on composition and such is still very valuable.
Again, thank you very much and I hope to return to your lovely state soon for Yosemite, a place I visited before getting into Photography but would love to return back to now!
Here's some fun light painting David and I did down at Pfeiffer Arch. Again, this is straight out of the camera, but I was amazed how symmetrical the light David painted was on our first attempt.
Glad you had a good trip. Nice set of images. I think your Pfiefer arch image came out great. My observation of the other 4 is that you have a pretty distinct color cast towards the magenta, and slightly red in the McWay image. The sunset image is a great comp and scene, but the color a little unnatural to my eye. The last two are nice coastal seascapes as well, but decidedly magenta. Are you using any filters? I don't recall seeing a whitebalance setting generating these kinds of colors. All very nice scenes, but I think some additional processing should take care of most of it.
Thanks for posting.
Lon
Posted by Scott Bideau on May 19, 2012 at 12:53 PM
Lon: thanks for the note. I used some ND filters and one of them was color casting (guess it wasn't neutral). I do plan to correct that.
I cracked my laptop's LCD screen in flight back and didn't even get a chance to really look at the images in detail before uploading them. Since I was primarily concerned about composition and such, I ignored that. Guess I should fix the obvious things first :)
Regardless, I had a tremendous time even though I got a bad case of Poisson Oak despite taking great precautions and the laptop repair will cost me a pretty penny. Thanks to everyone for their advice in my trip planning.
Discussion
10 repliesI'm posting a few images below and would love your critiques, keeping the following assumptions in mind:
1. Yes - some of my shots (like McWay Falls) are quite ordinary and will not likely generate any artistic enthusiasm by this group having seen that perspective a million times. That said, this was my first time seeing some of these beautiful places, and sometimes the image that has been replicated so many times before is the one which will look best hanging in my office as a reminder of a trip. I also had to work during the day and was limited to locations I could scout on the Internet and during the early evening before sunset. That said, I'm very much looking forward to coming back when I have more time to explore.
2. This was my very first attempt at landscape photography near the ocean. I'm typically capturing something like fall colors in the mountains of Colorado with aspen leaves changing over the course of several days. In Big Sur, the rise and fall of the tide combined with coastal winds I'm not used to, more sensor debris than I've ever encountered, etc. made for a very fun yet somewhat humbling time. In other words, I'm used to photographing trees and peaks at 10,000 feet, not cliffs and waves at 100 feet! It didn't help that despite growing up farming and having been an Eagle Scout, I still got poison oak :)
3. These images are basically straight out of the camera. I've got a full schedule this summer and likely won't be able to give them the processing they deserve for several months, but couldn't hold back my excitement and appreciation until then. I figure that the critique on composition and such is still very valuable.
Again, thank you very much and I hope to return to your lovely state soon for Yosemite, a place I visited before getting into Photography but would love to return back to now!
Thanks for posting.
Lon
Regardless, I had a tremendous time even though I got a bad case of Poisson Oak despite taking great precautions and the laptop repair will cost me a pretty penny. Thanks to everyone for their advice in my trip planning.