Invitation to provide some CC

[VirtualRain]

Here's a shot I posted in the POTD thread that I wasn't sure about...

It's essentially a cruise ship sailing into the sunset.


(click for larger view)

Here's a shot a few minutes later so you can see the path the vessel was on... here it's passing between me and the sun. This was originally shot vertical with the bottom half cropped out (it added nothing interesting).

Note that it never really emerges much above the horizon while there is interesting light...

The ship then disappeared to the right as the sun continued to set.

Here are a few different treatments of the original photo...

This one is simply a crop that excludes the sun...

This one uses a tighter vertical orientation and I've lightened the shadows as much as possible without introducing too much noise.

As I said in my POTD post, what might you have done differently with the original (top) photo. Would you have taken it at all? Would you have composed it differently (perhaps like one of the last two treatments)? Or would you have done something different?

I look forward to your thoughts.

 

[miles01110]

The 2nd photo is clearly the best, but I would have applied the rule of thirds in the vertical orientation a bit more strictly.

 

[VirtualRain]

The 2nd photo is clearly the best, but I would have applied the rule of thirds in the vertical orientation a bit more strictly.

Yeah, I'm interested in what you might have done with the first photo... are you saying you wouldn't have bothered with it and just waited for the 2nd shot?

EDIT, after messing around a bit more, and lining up the horizon, this might possibly make an interesting polyptych...

 

[fcortese]

As I said in my POTD post, what might you have done differently with the original (top) photo. Would you have taken it at all? Would you have composed it differently (perhaps like one of the last two treatments)? Or would you have done something different?

I look forward to your thoughts.[/QUOTE]

I like this one the best out of the samples you provided. I like the fact that I Find myself wanting to see where the boat is going, with the glow of the sun and its reflection off to the far right border of the picture. That coupled with the glow line makes this set up much more enjoyable to me than your original, IMO. Nice job overall.

 

[telecomm]

I'd process out the lens flare in the bottom left of #1 (and the cropped version #4).

For #2, I'd add a yellow colour cast in the centre where it's currently blown out, and I'd be tempted to remove the greenish hue around the sun as well.

Did you shoot these with a GND? If not, that might have helped too.

 

[Ish]

Thanks VR for all the beautiful photos of the Caribbean you've been posting recently!

You've got a lovely scene in the photographs but you obviously feel they're not quite what you want, so a few points on composition that struck me when I first looked at them:

The first picture has a lot of potential, but as it stands has two main focal points and the eye doesn't really rest anywhere. I like the fourth one much better when the subject is the boat and the sunset is just alluded to. The last one is a nice picture of the boat but doesn't tell the story to me in the same way as the fourth.

I like them all better after you cropped them for your triptych and let the sky dominate. It also cuts out the wave near the bottom of the fourth which catches the light and makes a horizontal line across the picture. The third one to me looks fine as part of the set, but when standing alone I'm thinking about the sun out of the frame on the left and the ship heading to somewhere out of the frame on the right.

You'll probably get as many opinions as there are posters but I hope this helps!

 

[TheDrift-]

I like the middle one of the three together the most.

I think it would be better of you were lower down so you could get a better silhouette against the horizon.

Beautiful colours though, the problem is getting it all together in one picture.

 

[VirtualRain]

I like this one the best out of the samples you provided. I like the fact that I Find myself wanting to see where the boat is going, with the glow of the sun and its reflection off to the far right border of the picture. That coupled with the glow line makes this set up much more enjoyable to me than your original, IMO. Nice job overall.

Thanks!

I'd process out the lens flare in the bottom left of #1 (and the cropped version #4).

For #2, I'd add a yellow colour cast in the centre where it's currently blown out, and I'd be tempted to remove the greenish hue around the sun as well.

Did you shoot these with a GND? If not, that might have helped too.

Yeah, I'm always torn when I see lens flare... sometimes it's a nice artistic addition to an image, and sometimes it's unwanted.

I never considered #2 all that interesting and only shared it here to put the other image in perspective. So I never looked at it that closely... If I end up using it, I may borrow your suggestions.

I shot these with my circular polarizer on, not that it was helping (at this angle) other than as a 2 stop ND filter.

Thanks VR for all the beautiful photos of the Caribbean you've been posting recently!

You've got a lovely scene in the photographs but you obviously feel they're not quite what you want, so a few points on composition that struck me when I first looked at them:

The first picture has a lot of potential, but as it stands has two main focal points and the eye doesn't really rest anywhere. I like the fourth one much better when the subject is the boat and the sunset is just alluded to. The last one is a nice picture of the boat but doesn't tell the story to me in the same way as the fourth.

I like them all better after you cropped them for your triptych and let the sky dominate. It also cuts out the wave near the bottom of the fourth which catches the light and makes a horizontal line across the picture. The third one to me looks fine as part of the set, but when standing alone I'm thinking about the sun out of the frame on the left and the ship heading to somewhere out of the frame on the right.

You'll probably get as many opinions as there are posters but I hope this helps!

Thanks... It's great to hear that you are enjoying them. I agree with you and tend to like the 4th image as well but I also see what you mean about the water and the triptych image is perhaps even better...

I'm liking this one a lot more now.

I like the middle one of the three together the most.

I think it would be better of you were lower down so you could get a better silhouette against the horizon.

Beautiful colours though, the problem is getting it all together in one picture.

Agreed about being lower down. I was on the top deck of my own ship when I took these which is some 14 stories above sea level without a lot of options.

 

[blevins321]

When I saw the first one, I instantly was reminded of that final ship scene in Battlestar Galactica when the fleet flies into the sun.