I spent some time recently on the South Glamorgan coast which has an excellent coastline for landscape photography with plenty of cliffs, sandy bays and rock formations. It is also generally south-west facing so catches the evening sunlight perfectly.
Canon 5D, 17-40mm F4 L at 17mm, f16, 0.4 seconds, manfrotto tripod, MLU+cable release, manual metering and focus.
This shot almost happened by accident. I had initially setup to photograph the sunset using a rockpool for the foreground interest. However the sunset was a bit unspectacular as the cloudy horizon prevented any really attractive evening colour developing in the sky.
As I was about to give up a surge of water pushed in and filled the rock pool (and nearly filled my boots). Standing on tiptoe I waited for the surge to subside and tried to capture some movement in the water as it ebbed away.
I quite liked the end result and was pleased to salvage something from an otherwise lacklustre sunset.
I thought I would post it on UKNP and see what others think about this shot, no excuses that you only 'do birds'
The 5D handles just like the 20D and I found it easy to move from the 20D to 5D, most of the controls and menu options are the same. It handles well, especially with the Battery grip fitted.
Big difference is with the viewfinder. Composition and manual focussing are much easier than with the 20D thanks to the big bright full frame viewfinder. The shutter also has a softer and quieter sound than the 20D. Image quality is excellent. I haven't examined any files in extreme detail, but some shots I took over the weekend with the 17-40 and 24-70 look great at 100%. It is also nice to use my 17-40 as a true wide angle lens again, very useful for landscapes. I haven't tried any flight shots. The 5D has the extra 6 'hidden' focus sensors when using servo focus so I will be interested to try some action shots. Hopefully the tracking is a bit more reliable than the 20D which is very unforgiving if you allow the central focus point to drift off the subject.
The swirly foreground makes a strong and interesting focal point to the composition. Possibly a more vivid sunset may have detracted from that. As it stands, it looks nicely balanced to me, and suspect it looks very impressive in print, where the full detail is revealed.
I'm no expert at this type of shot, but i know what i like, and i like this!
Hi Sean - well I know little about landscape photography, though it is something I want to learn about. So take my comments with a pinch of salt. For me, this shot although it captures the evening mood very well, doesn't quite work. For me a good landscape take you on a journey. I find my eye starts with the rocks and the circular motion of the water and then the journey sort of peters out. I don't think the other graphical elements are strong enough. As a big print - I think it would look pretty good but I know you can produce much better.
One thing I have learned about landscape photography - its much harder than I thought
Very Nice Sean, good to see you putting that 5D to work on landscapes, agree 100% with John, Lanscape photography is darned hard, for me at least, so I tip my hat to you...
Like the above I do very little landscape photography, but find your image very pleasing to the eye. I do agree that there is no really strong point of interest in the image which may be due to either subject matter, lighting or a combination of both!
Hello Sean
I quite like the overall image, however, I find the bottom left hand corner a little too dark on my screen and I think it detracts from the rest of the image.
Best wishes
Phil
Posted by John Chapman on March 8, 2006 at 5:34 AM
Hi Sean
a very nice moody landscape.
John
Aberdeen
Mixed feelings here too. Colours are beautifull and I like the water effect. Not sure though about the rocks in the middle right. Bet it would look nice in print.
I like this Sean. For ultimate compositional perfection (in my view anyway!!!) I think I'd have panned slightly to the right, so that the centre point of the circular swirl was a bit further into the frame. I think the resulting smaller gap between the rocks and the left hand edge would be slightly better too.
There's a bit of barrel distortion to the horizon aswell, which is to be expected with the horizon off centre at 17mm. Easy to correct in PS I suspect.
Despite what I've just said (which might suggest I don't like it!), I *do* like it a lot. I also like the contrast of cool foreground water with warm sky.
nice to see you getting closer to the sea, my underwater stuff might tempt you in it one day, with a camera of course......try wetpixel.com for some classifieds.
ok, onto the landscape, i like it, especially the foreground, you{ve caught the swirl of the rockpool just right, and the angle of the strong ripple gives you something to lead the eye through the picture. i dont find the dark part below particularly distracting from the image. what i do find lets it down is the background. it{s just not strong enough, and lets the foreground run away with the image. maybe a really really stormy sky with lots of red in it would have made it balance out well, or not sure how practical it would have been, but maybe wading out and placing the whirlpool in different relation to the background would have worked out well, but then you might have tripped up and dropped the new camera in the drink!!! as far as i{ve read, or paracticed, the key to landscape photography is a balance of strong foreground and an equally strong background, with lighting to enhance the both, which is the difficult bit, but here you have the lighting and the foreground but not the background. i hope you dont think im being negative, as it has a lot going for it, but hopefully can be improved upon.
Firstly thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on this image, I appreciate the varied opinions and feedback from you all. Some food for thought.
I personally feel landscape photography has less 'rules' than wildlife photography and often the assesment of an image is quite subjective. I quite liked the overall effect of this image but on analysis I couldn't see why, so it is good to get some opinions from others as to what does or doesn't work in this shot.
Michael, I am using BreezeBrowser which now includes PTLens as a conversion option which will correct for lens distortion during the RAW conversion process. This is especially useful with the 17-40 as it does suffer from quite a bit of distortion, although I didn't enable the lens correction for this shot.
Mark, I think this is the most amount of sea-water you will ever find me in and I did panic for a moment when the waves rolled in and my new shiny camera was balanced precariously above the surf.
I expect to return to this part of the coast again this year and I will be trying to improve on my landscape photography techniques. I agree that landscape photography is much harder than it seems.
Discussion
16 repliesI spent some time recently on the South Glamorgan coast which has an excellent coastline for landscape photography with plenty of cliffs, sandy bays and rock formations. It is also generally south-west facing so catches the evening sunlight perfectly.
Canon 5D, 17-40mm F4 L at 17mm, f16, 0.4 seconds, manfrotto tripod, MLU+cable release, manual metering and focus.
This shot almost happened by accident. I had initially setup to photograph the sunset using a rockpool for the foreground interest. However the sunset was a bit unspectacular as the cloudy horizon prevented any really attractive evening colour developing in the sky.
As I was about to give up a surge of water pushed in and filled the rock pool (and nearly filled my boots). Standing on tiptoe I waited for the surge to subside and tried to capture some movement in the water as it ebbed away.
I quite liked the end result and was pleased to salvage something from an otherwise lacklustre sunset.
I thought I would post it on UKNP and see what others think about this shot, no excuses that you only 'do birds'
cheers
Sean
The 5D handles just like the 20D and I found it easy to move from the 20D to 5D, most of the controls and menu options are the same. It handles well, especially with the Battery grip fitted.
Big difference is with the viewfinder. Composition and manual focussing are much easier than with the 20D thanks to the big bright full frame viewfinder. The shutter also has a softer and quieter sound than the 20D. Image quality is excellent. I haven't examined any files in extreme detail, but some shots I took over the weekend with the 17-40 and 24-70 look great at 100%. It is also nice to use my 17-40 as a true wide angle lens again, very useful for landscapes. I haven't tried any flight shots. The 5D has the extra 6 'hidden' focus sensors when using servo focus so I will be interested to try some action shots. Hopefully the tracking is a bit more reliable than the 20D which is very unforgiving if you allow the central focus point to drift off the subject.
cheers
Sean
The swirly foreground makes a strong and interesting focal point to the composition. Possibly a more vivid sunset may have detracted from that. As it stands, it looks nicely balanced to me, and suspect it looks very impressive in print, where the full detail is revealed.
I'm no expert at this type of shot, but i know what i like, and i like this!
Alan
One thing I have learned about landscape photography - its much harder than I thought
John
Like the above I do very little landscape photography, but find your image very pleasing to the eye. I do agree that there is no really strong point of interest in the image which may be due to either subject matter, lighting or a combination of both!
David
Barrie
I quite like the overall image, however, I find the bottom left hand corner a little too dark on my screen and I think it detracts from the rest of the image.
Best wishes
Phil
a very nice moody landscape.
John
Aberdeen
Mixed feelings here too. Colours are beautifull and I like the water effect. Not sure though about the rocks in the middle right. Bet it would look nice in print.
Paul
NL/Rotterdam
Tim
There's a bit of barrel distortion to the horizon aswell, which is to be expected with the horizon off centre at 17mm. Easy to correct in PS I suspect.
Despite what I've just said (which might suggest I don't like it!), I *do* like it a lot. I also like the contrast of cool foreground water with warm sky.
Michael S
hi sean,
nice to see you getting closer to the sea, my underwater stuff might tempt you in it one day, with a camera of course......try wetpixel.com for some classifieds.
ok, onto the landscape, i like it, especially the foreground, you{ve caught the swirl of the rockpool just right, and the angle of the strong ripple gives you something to lead the eye through the picture. i dont find the dark part below particularly distracting from the image. what i do find lets it down is the background. it{s just not strong enough, and lets the foreground run away with the image. maybe a really really stormy sky with lots of red in it would have made it balance out well, or not sure how practical it would have been, but maybe wading out and placing the whirlpool in different relation to the background would have worked out well, but then you might have tripped up and dropped the new camera in the drink!!! as far as i{ve read, or paracticed, the key to landscape photography is a balance of strong foreground and an equally strong background, with lighting to enhance the both, which is the difficult bit, but here you have the lighting and the foreground but not the background. i hope you dont think im being negative, as it has a lot going for it, but hopefully can be improved upon.
best regards,
mark.
Firstly thank you to everyone who took the time to comment on this image, I appreciate the varied opinions and feedback from you all. Some food for thought.
I personally feel landscape photography has less 'rules' than wildlife photography and often the assesment of an image is quite subjective. I quite liked the overall effect of this image but on analysis I couldn't see why, so it is good to get some opinions from others as to what does or doesn't work in this shot.
Michael, I am using BreezeBrowser which now includes PTLens as a conversion option which will correct for lens distortion during the RAW conversion process. This is especially useful with the 17-40 as it does suffer from quite a bit of distortion, although I didn't enable the lens correction for this shot.
Mark, I think this is the most amount of sea-water you will ever find me in
I expect to return to this part of the coast again this year and I will be trying to improve on my landscape photography techniques. I agree that landscape photography is much harder than it seems.
cheers
Sean
What a coincidence! I actually downloaded the PT Lens photoshop plug-in last night! And I hadn't read your message until just now!!
Michael S