Im into week two of my ovine aversion therapy, and, until your comment about hot sheep, I was really making progress.
Sorry for being the little red devil on your shoulder
actually, no I'm not. More sheep, please!
^^^ This is a bit special: beautiful, muted colour palette, soft lighting, and so much for the eye to enjoy that it doesn't need a single 'subject' or 'point of focus'. It would make a great poster for the wall...
But it does have a point of focus: the topmost rock that juts into the sky and has the most orange on it. The arc of the rocks leads from the foreground right out to that rock, which in turn directs the eye up to the sky--and there we find a convenient cloud formation that points us back down to the rocks, where the eye can return to its parking place on that one prominent rock again. It's a splendid composition and a truly lovely photo.
Which leads me to ask: where did you come from all of the sudden, otter?? My goodness your work is strong! Either you just started posting here or else you just started posting more frequently
or else you've been flying under my radar for a while and I've been missing out. I'm really enjoying your photos, so I hope you keep them coming!
It's actually as "yellow" as it was in person, which is why I was drawn to the shot in the first place. I never saw such a golden splash of sunrise light like this. Believe me this is as close to the true colors as possible, I made it a point to not over do it. Also, the boat is truly that dulled down pastel blue color. There was no "popping" at the scene either. If I made it pop, it wouldnt be true to what I saw. I knew people would jump on this because I said HDR. Not all HDR images are created equally.
I have no problem with HDR per se; it's a means to an end, and it can be very effective when employed judiciously. Had you not said a thing about HDR, I'd still see an image that is rather flat and that has an extreme color cast, the sort of thing that suggests an uncalibrated monitor much more so than golden hour light. Just for kicks, why don't you try taking the photo into Photoshop, applying a color balance layer, and then nudging the highlights more towards blue/cyan--just see how it looks. Try the mids a bit too--they seem to have too much magenta. You can leave in enough warmth to evoke morning light without having your whites so heavily tainted.
Ultimately, your photo is your interpretation of what you perceived, but presumably you also want to maximize its aesthetic appeal. Images tend to work best when they look balanced or else deliberately stylized; when they fall in between, they just look unresolved. I've certainly made that mistake with many of my own images and usually don't realize it until I come back to a photo with fresh eyes some time later. And one last point, sort of my hobby horse: don't be a slave to 'reality'
it doesn't exist in photography.
