Last Light

My first impression is that the colors don't look real, but I wasn't there and can't say with any certainty. For composition, I would take some off of the bottom. The oof foreground isn't all that interesting and there is a lot of it. With this light you should be able to shoot at f7 or so to get more of the foreground and background sharp. I like the concept. The silhouette works well.

The orange is pretty incredible. It's a beautiful color combination. Lots of possibilities with the composition, and perhaps the increased DoF Charlie alluded to might open up even more options. I don't mind this crop, but a pano crop with the bird in the lower right third would be pretty effective as well.

Max

Thanks for the comments. Charlie, the colors are definitely real, straight out of the camera as I wrote in the description, but I can understand that being hard to believe. The red, setting sun is just above the frame over the water, so the light was beautiful. I do wish I had used a small aperture so the bottom of the frame was more interesting, but I had been shooting wide open for hours and it just didn't occur to me, and I'm also pretty new to telephoto photography. As far as a crop, I'm pretty sure this would look better cropped down, but i've tried all sorts of comps and keep coming back to full frame. I'll keep looking at it. Thanks again.

The subject of the photo is "Last Light". The gull is there to lend perspective. I think you have hit on a good solution, and the light is wonderful. Greater DOF would have been great, but wishing so won't make it so. I agree with the crop to remove most of the OOF stuff. My thought is at least to the bottom of the Gull's reflection and a small amount off the RHS.

Hi Thomas,
Straight out of the camera doesn't always mean that the colors are true to reality. For instance, if your white balance adjustment is off... you can get all sorts of color variations. Some cameras automatically add saturation when shooting in jpeg mode. Straight out of the camera only works if the camera is set correctly.

That's true Charlie. What I should have written is that the colors are accurate, rather than straight out of the camera, because as you say, that doesn't mean much. I shoot in raw, the AWB on the 5d Mark iii is quite good, and I processed the photo shortly after shooting it so they are definitely accurate. This might be one of those rare (and lovely) instances where desaturating an image might make it look more realistic to some eyes. Thanks for your comments.

An incredible sunset display you captured Thomas, it's nice that you had such a co-operative subject to focus on. I like the lines of blue separating the intense oranges. I have seen colors like this in some of my sunset or sunrise files also, sometimes I just de-saturate the frame a bit to see what it looks like. I think a pano-crop is an option to experiment with for a more pleasing composition.

I agree Ken, I had to make it a pretty extreme pano to feel good about the comp, but I like how it turned out.

Amazing colors - good positioning on the bird. It's wild how the bird appears to be standing on the water

Very cool, Thomas. The color is glorious and I like the silhouette. I do think some of the oof foreground could be removed with benefit (maybe to the top of the heavy blue band).

Love the colors and silhouette! Pano crop is better IMO.

I like the repost better. I wish that the wings could have been frozen. I realize that this was not possible with the lighting condition. Very nice image.