Twilight Rockpool

Canon 5D, Canon 17-40mm L @ 21mm, Manual mode, Spot metering,
Two exposures combined: 6seconds @ f16 and 0.8 seconds @ f16.
Raw, iso 50, Gitzo 1548/B1, Remote release, m.l.u.

Full frame, Levels, Curves and Saturation applied selectivly.


Hi,

Been spending a little time exploring the coastline recently.
This one was taken a couple of weeks ago.
Quite a memorable excursion this one, as it's a location I hadn't visited before,it's a fairly strenuous hike of a couple of miles from my parked car,over the cliff top, and down to this particular bay.I was determined to stay well after sunset in the hope of some twilight colour,when the exposures became longer than 10 minutes I decided to call it a day and then suddenly realized it was pitch black and I wasn't entirely sure I would be able to retrace by route back along the coastal path,having not taken a blind bit of notice of how I got there ,too busy bird watching and looking out for wildlife on the way .
Thankfully made it back in one piece and was quite pleased I only managed to fall in the one ditch (literally),although the real challenge was trying to navigate my way down a pitch black,wet-mud coated woodland path with just a barbed wire fence for support and navigation.
All good fun and certainly worked up a good appetite.
A subsequant visit has revealed a less strenuous route and a torch,now makes life so much easier.


Quite new to all this blended exposure malarky ,so any comments, no matter how critical and harsh would be most welcome and helpful.

Can't help with any constructive critique, but I can say that I really like it. Great detail and like the comp. Really well done..... however you did it



Graeme

Cool-would like great on the wall

Hi Justin,

This is very nice indeed. I have never tried double exposure's then blending, any chance of posting your workflow? Thanks for sharing your funny story although I'm sure you did'nt think so at the time

Regards

Rob

Looks alright, has the sort of texture that would work well on canvas I reckon. I had a go at cloning out the big rock in the sea thought it improved it but not so sure.
Great shot, wish sometimes the sea wasn't a hundred mile away.



Tim

Hi Justin,

I like the diagonal lines in the foreground and the big rocks in the sea. The thin band of colour in the sky is nice.

Your account of how you got the image is entertaining.
You might have one already, but I find an LED head torch works well for this kind of excursion. I got one of the cheap ones from 7dayshop.

Its nice to see some landscape images on here.

Looks good to me...... like the fact it shows three elements, the rocks, the sea and the sky.

Not sure how you carried out the blending, but sometimes the results end up looking a little flat and I think this is the case here -although this may be a result of the file size and colour space.

Hi Justin

I like the composition but I also feel like Phil that the colours are a bit flat. I took the liberty (as I often do....) of downloading your image and tweaking about a bit to see if I could bring some life to the foreground colours, give it a bit of Joe Cornish Velvia ooomph. Maybe I have overcooked it, as always with this type of manipulation there are infinite variations and everyone will prefer a different version.

See what you think anyway, what I have done is just a bit rough and ready and I just played around with levels, curves, saturation and colour balance until I got something I thought had a bit more zing about it. I think it would need fine tuning but it kinda shows what is possible.

I would be interested in your comments as this is the type of thing I would do with this type of low light landscape shot.

cheers

Sean

p.s. enjoyed the story too I recommend a good head torch for evening landscape photography

Oops forgot the image, here it is ;

I have never tried double exposure's then blending, any chance of posting your workflow?

Hi Rob,
Workflow was as follows:

1) Converted the two seperate Raw files using Capture One (one exposed for the sky and one exposed for the foreground rocks)
2) Opened both images is Photoshop.
3) Selected and copied the lighter of the two images (the one exposed for the rocks) and pasted it onto the darker one (the sky exposure)
4) Created a layer mask
5) Selected the brush and used a combination of various sizes,hardness's and opacity settings to paint over the sky area,revealing the correctly exposed sky from the underlying layer.
5) Flattened the image.
6) Created a new levels adjustment layer and adjusted the shadow and highlight sliders untill a fraction before the detail began to become clipped,as seen by keeping the Alt key pressed whilst adjusting.
7) Created a curves adjustment layer and adjusted untill the sky looked ok,i.e. a little more contrasty.Using the brush set to black painted onto the adjustment layer over the rock and sea area,so only the sky was affected by the curves adjustment.
8) Same as Step 7 but this time adjusting the contrast for everything but the sky.
9) Created a hue/saturation adjustment layer and applied a slight overall increase in saturation to the entire image,off the top of my head,I probably would have used anything from +8-+12 which is the amount I generally tend to use.
10) Created another hue/saturation adjustment layer and increased the saturation slightly so the rockpool had a little more colour,like I remembered at the time.Painted over the adjustment layer using a black brush so that only the rockpool was affected by the saturation increase.
11) Saved the image as an unflattened 16bit PSD file.
12) The usual adjustments for web viewing,i.e. convert to sRGB,re-sized to 720 pixels,sharpened using USM at 100%,0.2,0 three or four times.










Sean

Many,many thanks for taking the time to tweak the image.When I posted it I really wasn't happy with it,hence the request for the feedback,however I couln't put my finger on why it disappointed.I suspected the lack of contrast was the issue but wasn't sure.
I generally tend to be very,very cautious of over-cooking images lately,especially when it comes to contrast and colour saturation,I love bright and vivid colour but find it a very fine line between a bright,colourful well processed image and an over done one,hence the softly,softly approach which I now try and adapt.
However,having seen your re-post, which makes my attempt look positively dull and completly lack-lustre,I think I'll try and adopt a slightly more adventurous approach to processing.
Thanks for showing the extra punch that can be obtained with a little more aggressive use of the curves,levels and saturation commands.A real eye-opener and a tremendous help.







Richard/Sean

A head torch is definately on the shopping list.Been meaning to buy one for ages.

Hi Justin

I really like your image and when you consider the time of day I am sure your post is much closer to what you saw. That said Sean and Phil's take on your image does have merit but I feel Sean for me has overcooked it a little. If it were mine I would just select the rock pool and try lifting the contrast and maybe also the colours a tad and leave the rest of the image as is!

David

Justin, i really like all of your atmospheric images and this is no exception!
Great stuff.
Rene de Heer

Your original post has the mood of a twilight image, and I really like it that way. Perhaps, as David said, just a little easing of the fg shadows to bring up a tiny bit more light and detail.... The 2nd image, as posted, looks unnatural to me and spoils the mood.

Thanks for sharing the adventure. What fun-- after you got safely home, I am sure! Nice bright LED headlamp (er, uh.... torch) makes for less of a great story but better self preservation.