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Sanna Bay, Scotland
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Just back from a trip to Scotland. Like Connemara, but bigger :)
Anyhow, here’s one from Sanna Bay. Very little done in post, little bit of fill light and cropping.
The colour is from a mix of using a 4 stop ND and a 3 stop grad ND together.
Light is magic Sean, but I get a little tired of seeing dark boulders placed smack in the middle of the foreground. I’ve done it plenty of times myself I would add, but the technique is quite formulaic and is quite ineffective in this instance I would say.
I think it is better to use foreground to lead us in rather than block us in. This boulder is just too dark and central. Even if there had been some nice swirls of water around it, I think this would have helped.
It’s a shame too because the light is gorgeous. I just feel the composition lets this one down. The horizon is also noticeably curved.
Thanks for your comments Andy. I appreciate you taking time to critique.
The bay is so busy in terms of features that it’s hard to get clean composition. Being the backseat passenger meant that I had less choice over locations, and in all truth had given up hope of getting anything.
I have lightened the rock, but obviously not enough. The aim was to keep it simple. I use lines and form to lead in all the time, but here there was little to use. As to formulaic, isn’t all good landscape photography to an extent? Even the process of using leading lines and curves is a forumla. Rules of thirds, golden mean, golden spiral? All formula.
Your points are both well made and well taken. I’m still happy with the image seeing as I actually had walked almost a mile after going back to the jeep to offload my wellies! Bearing in mind that I didn’t think there would be anything, I could’ve gotten much worse.
I’ll add one or 2 more shots to the post.
Forgot to mention the curve.. Yep. hate that. Both the 17-40 and the 24-70 barrel ridiculously on full frame. I couldn’t get over how bad it is.
As these are just exports from Lightroom which has no lens distortion correction, I have to live with it until I’m creating final exports for Photoshop.Sean,
Do bear in mind that I’ve been admiring your photography and I am critiquing based on some of your other superb work that I have seen. There is one image in particular on your webpage that features a fantastic sky and a foreground boulder which is perfectly angled and perfectly lit. When the formula works and fits we are wise to use it.
I’m glad to see that you enjoyed Scotland anyway. You make me homesick.
And here’s a final one without the 4 stop grad, and a little earlier on. The mix of the ND and the grad makes the image go pinker in the grad area.
I completely understood where you were coming from Andy. And I took it in that spirit. And you’re not wrong either, I was just glad to come away with something. When things are right, it can be amazing. Other times it sucks. This time I was trying to reduce the suckage :)
seanmcfoto wrote:
Forgot to mention the curve.. Yep. hate that. Both the 17-40 and the 24-70 barrel ridiculously on full frame. I couldn’t get over how bad it is.
As these are just exports from Lightroom which has no lens distortion correction, I have to live with it until I’m creating final exports for Photoshop.Yes, the curve is distracting; DPP should be able to correct for this, though it’s not a program that I use. You could consider
PTLens, which will automatically correct this.I’ve used the trial version of PTlens and liked it. Should have bought it when it was $15 though!
I’m not sure how it can be used in conjunction with Mogrify though.
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