Cascading Wave Pattern

What a great spot. Excellent job on the blending and your choice for this shutter speed is really working for me too.

This is excellent, I like your composition, a quality piece of work
Well done.

Geoff.

Zack, both of your posts from this spot are exceptional. I prefer the shutter speed on this one. There isn't much horizon to notice it, but I feel that you may need a hair of CW rotation.

Beautifully done. I like this one a lot better than the previous one.

- Dan.

Great comp and processing/presentation, Zack. I also prefer this version over the previous one, although both are superb.

Wonderful! Love this one Zack. The colors are great and the water is awesome.

Nick Bristol
Lone Rock, WI

Nice job with the blending. It' very close, but I think i prefer this to your last post. The water action and lighter rock tones, especially on the large stack outside the keyhole, are very nice.

Zack, I prefer this one to the previous one you posted. I like the colors, and great detail in the water motion. Great!

Beautiful shot, same as the other version I saw. I like the amount of detail you have in the arch up at the top.

You nailed the water movement here, and great comp and overall exposure. There's a bit of halo on upper edges of the cliff in the background, and perhaps the shadows could be opened up a tad.

Joseph, you're right there is a slight tilt here, I've fixed it in the original.

Kartik, I'm going to disagree with you about the shadows. I intentionally left the shadows where they are, I wanted to avoid the look associated with an over tone mapped HDR image. Also, there are no halos in the original, any slight halos here are caused by sharpening for the web.

I MUCH prefer this over your previous one Zack; both the composition and water action are superior IMO. This is darn near as good as it gets!

WOW!! Amazing!! I must have those ADVANCED EXPOSURE BLENDING TECHNIQUES

Hehe... James. This was a particularly challenging image, I really had to pull out all stops on this one. I even developed a couple new techniques in the process to help deal with the chromatic aberrations around the keyhole that the lens correction filter.

I think I prefer this one too Zack, some nice water action and a lot more detail on the inner walls of the arch.

Gary.

Nicely done! I like the motion of the water and the detail of the cliffs.

This one is my favorite of the series you have posted, I really like the hues of the reflected light on the water, and the shutter speed you chose is perfect.

The water flow is gorgeous Zack, great exposure choice!

Zack,

Great 2nd verse... Beautiful combination of frames. I love the water over the rocks, although it's almost too perfect... Beautifully crafted work.

Lon

Beautiful image, Zack. Definitely one to be displayed at your shows.

Very nicely done. I like this shutter speed too. Could see doing a tad lighter with the blue in the sky.

Beautiful, Zack!! Love the movement of the water, as you've captured it well. The colors and details of the rock walls and sky sure add a pop to the composition!

Lovely, Zack! Great post-processing. I hope to see
many more of your postings.

Sweet light, color, water movement, and comp. Outstanding work.

Simply excellent!

Wow Zack. Love the texture in the waves. Fabulous.

Nathan

Im having another one of those twilight zone moments...
The comp is superb, Zack, very dynamic and exciting. Terrific job on the surf exposure and some great light. But i have some issues with the blend (and maybe im having a drug induced flashback, since everyone else seems to be happy with it...). First, the top of the arch is too dark. There is no reason it should look any different than the two side walls, where you can make out detail. Id bring out the shadows just a tad there to match the detail of the walls. Second, the fg water is too radioactive/bright. The cyan 'glow' in the surf highlites is almost as bright as the direct light in the bg/outside surf--and as a result the dynamics suffer. These are relatively minor adjustments (which maybe is why no one feels like mentioning them ) but im pretty sure that you want to get this shot as perfect as you can, and at least IMHO, those are the two necessary corrections.

Stan, you're actually wrong on both counts. Let me explain. As you can see from this single raw exposure there is open sky on this side of the arch. And the exposure is extremely close to the water in the BG. This is straight out of ACR, no adjustments made in photoshop. You can also see the top of the arch is darker for the same reason, the open sky on this side of the arch.

Tony, I do agree that the upper sky needs to be lightened some, I'm working on adjusting it.

Thanks for the comments and critiques.

Dude! Another killer shot from here. WOW, so difficult to chose which I like more.... so, I won't. I like them both the same. I'd love to see them both in print sometime.

Ok, Jack--thanks for the response, the open sky up top does explain things somewhat--but you cannot tell me that i am "wrong"--i am just giving you my subjective opinion, which you are free to disagree with (and since no one else except maybe Kartik shares my opinion--maybe you are wise to disagree!) In my opinion, your 'RAW' repost makes my point very well--a picture is truly worth a thousand arguments! In the repost, i can see just as much detail in the side walls as i can in the top arch--a least on this monitor, which is not calibrated but that shouldnt make a difference in the comparative detail. In fact, i prefer the exposure in the unedited version more so than in the 'final' version! It looks to me that the ony real difference between the two is that it looks like the side walls towards the bottom are brighter in the top version, like theyve been dodged or brightened. This causes what i perceive as a difference in the brightness--which is greater than that explained alone by the 'open sky' above. Similarly, i think the ocean exposure looks good in the RAW, the radioactive highlites arent present there up front so it looks much more natural to me--theres a clear difference in the bright areas in terms of comparative brightness. Again, these are minor points but IMO, they make a difference. Feel free to ignore my advice.
EDIT: I just saw your response to Tony--i didnt even mention that part since i thought it was too minor--but that actually might be the cause of what i perceive as an overly dark top part, since the sky is darker there it might be giving me the illusion that the arch is too dark also. Wouldnt know until i saw it 'corrected'.

Stan, I'm surprised you're not working on a calibrated monitor, that might explain a lot actually. My screen is calibrated for my Epson 7900 printer, what I see on my screen is almost exactly what I see in a print. My screen is much more subdued because of that. This is important, the print is my end product, that is what I'm most concerned with. if I view this on an un-calibrated screen it may indeed look electric, on my calibrated screen it looks exactly how I want it to look. Admittedly that still might be too much for some people's taste, but that is another matter.

I may tone down the cyans in the FG a little though.

Here is an updated version with the cyans pulled back in the FG just a tad, and the sky lightened a bit. I might lighten the sky just a hair more, but in the print is looks fantastic. Subtle changes, but I don't think it needed much, especially judging by the print.