This image came together in a couple of seconds, which is about all the time I had to get a couple of shots. While driving along Iceland's southeast coast between Jokulsarlon and Hofn, I admired the beautiful cloud reflection and didn't see the 14 Whooper Swans at first. I slammed on the brakes when I did and composed quickly so as not to lose them in the black sands that divide the image. Without the birds I thought it would be a cool shot, but the line of birds mirroring the long lines of the sand and cloud formation made it work much beter for me.
I am trying to decide if a crop to only include the clouds, birds, & reflection would improve things. Basically eliminating any sign of the blue sky. This would make the birds more visible, but I do like the graphic nature of the clouds and the expansive feel they give the shot. I did crop a slight amount of the top cloud to miror the reflected cloud. Unfortunately, I don't think I have an image of the entire top cloud surrounded by sky. Any thoughts appreciated.
Nikon 810, ISO 400, f8, 1/2000 sec.
Suggest Viewing the Large Version to actually maybe see the birds
Comments
7 commentsI like the sky included. Real nice image. I think I would prefer to not have the top cloud cut off, but minor.
My initial sense is that you combined two images one above the other into an enclosing frame. I thought this was done as some sort of montage. Now, even though I know this is a stretch of black sand it still looks like 2 images because it is pure black and parallel and perfectly horizontal. I don't know. I feel like the black line bisects the image and creates 2 distinct compositions. The connection between the two is not clear for me.
Thanks guys.
Igor - Part of the attraction of the image for me was that it is a bit of an optical illusion and makes the viewer figure out what is going on. Hard to tell on the small versions, but plenty of detail in the black sand spit, but I could brighten that area so the details are more visible and part of the image instead of a boarder placed between 2 images. Thanks for pointing that out, as it didn't occur to me but I can now see your point!
Interesting and inviting image, Harry. As presented, with the black borde that matches very well in width the black line of beach, it does have a feeling of a vertical duplex (which I think works very well here). In the larger version, with the thin white border, the "duplex" sense is much reduced. The swans are so small that until I saw the larger version where it's clearly birds flying, I was thinking fence posts
. The cut off cloud top strike me as the kind of thing that we NPNer's like to harp on, but that most of the general public wouldn't notice. (I certainly was struck by the fine symmetry of the reflection long before I noticed the cut off cloud top...). Were this mine, I'd present it to the public with a black border like the 720px version has, but obviously, that's an artistic decision that only you can make.
Great combination of an eye-catching graphic design and interesting small details to see when you look close. Those details would be great in a larger presentation, but they are difficult to see on my monitor, even at 1200 pixels wide.
Whether you add more sky or not, I think a major factor in cropping/expanding decisions for this image is how it will be presented. For a large print or maybe a 2-page book or magazine spread, you can include lots of the surrounding environment and still see the swans. But for a small presentation, the swans will look like unidentifiable spots unless you can make them look larger by doing some cropping. (Nice use of a camera with tons of pixels, like your new D810.)
More sky? This looks good as presented, but if you want to add the top of the cloud, and you don't mind embellishing, content aware fill can help to "finish off" the cloud. In som images, you can just paste your image on a larger canvas, select a rectangular marquee on the blank edge, and do a content-aware fill. But in this image you have to replace the blank area in small pieces, and then use the clone stamp to patch it up. (I tried it, and replacing large sections of sky ends up duplicating a bunch of clouds where you want blue sky. The key to filling it is to select narrow horizontal strips rather than the whole area to fill. I'll e-mail the quick fix so you can see get an idea if adding more sky might be worth more work.)
Thanks Wayne - I am kicking myself for not getting it all in one shot. I have found an image without the swans taken just after that has all of the clouds included. I may just use the bottom most of that image and attach to the presented shot and not crop off the top of the top cloud to keep the mirror image. My intention was for a large print, but may have worked better in this forum to crop to see the birds better. Thanks for the soution idea - might work in other images better than in this one.
I do love the new camera. Even cropping images give me great ability to enlarge, and the quality of pixels is great for enlarging as well. Thanks
I think this is really cool. The black sand and the birds add a sense of tension that I like very much. Like others, I'd like to see the top of the cloud. Very nicely done!
--P