Coastal God Beams--Repost

One of the last from my autumn trip to Cannon Beach. I might have a few more somewhere.


Feedback welcome:

Great clouds and God rays! Looks like you got the exposure just right to capture the full range of tones, so there is a lot to work with if you want to do any enhancements.

I'm a stickler for straight horizons, unless there's a heavy tilt that was obviously intended. Your horizon is only a few degrees off, but just enough to bother me. If it was my photo, I would probably crop the bottom to just above the bright area on the right - I'd want more emphasis on the sky and no distraction from that lower right area. I'd also crop the right side to get rid of the rock on the edge, and a little on the left. Those crops put the horizon at 1/3 from the bottom and the main sea stack at 1/3 from the left. The "Rule of Thirds" doesn't have to be applied to all landscapes, but I think it makes a pleasing composition here.

Beyond composition, I'd probably try lightening the lower right area of sand and water just a little, and maybe experiment with a Lightroom Adjustment Brush to add Clarity, or use a third party plugin, to add even more drama to the clouds.

I'll bet you could also do a great black & white conversion with this photo.

There's so much to look at in your image, I enjoy it the way it is. I might work with certain tones a bit, but I do like the range of them from light to dark. I think I'd rather play with something like NIK Color Efex rather than do any cropping. There's a lot of drama there to be enhanced if you're into it.

Thanks, Greg and Catherine. I didn't notice the tilted horizon, but I'm almost always .52 down on the right. In this one, I think the distant line of ocean fooled me a bit. I'll play with it in Nik a bit. I like the brightness in the reflection cropped out of Greg's version, but I can also appreciate the clearer subject with it cropped out.

I did a quick and dirty job with a couple of filters. Let me know which ones you are leaning toward if you have time. Somehow my SilverEfex Pro has upgraded to 2.0, which I don't have a license for....bummer. Can't seem to find 1.0 either. So, here is a B+W just in LR.

And here is a different comp (wider) with a rather strong contrast filter applied in Color Efex.

Finally, if I haven't worn out my welcome, another with a contrast boost and warming filter.

The last one is definitely my favorite. This is a good shot and exposure and, like everyone has said, there's lots to work with. the 2nd to last has lots of drama and presents a very good visual, but it made the color in the sky too dark and not nearly as vibrant. I really like this last shot but I would love to see the same affects applied to the wider view in the 2nd to last shot. I think that would be a great comparison.

I made an attempt to duplicate the effect directly above with the wider composition. This is the problem with getting out of practice with my process...I used to record the specific filter from ColorEfex in the new filename, but I couldn't fully reconstruct it. This is a decent effort, I think, though it is a different original file. I'm still undecided on the two compositions. Perhaps the wider comp, but in a pano with the bright foreground cropped out or burned a bit as Greg suggested? Any thoughts greatly appreciated as usual.

Marylynn, my favorite out of all of these is the wide with the strong contrast filter! It really makes the scene pop! Beautiful!!