Hot Tub!

[FrankMi]

No matter how I look at it, there is something missing!



You!

Wait! Is that your shadow?

[Mike Buckley]

Great tonalities and miniscule shapes!

This would work for me as a nice abstract if it weren't for the rising part of the water near the center that has a strongly vertical shape. That shape competes with all the horizontal layers of the image including the two shadows. If you have a capture that has only the horizontal layers, I would really be interested in seeing it.

[FrankMi]

Sheezze Mike! and I thought that was the subject! Dang!

I might be able to talk that lump into going to sleep!

[Mike Buckley]

It would probably work for me as the subject if the two strong shadows weren't in the image.

[CLK]

I like it but think you should go back out and jump in and see if there are 3 dark shadows lurking in there. I like the large wave on the right center with the shadow under the crest but do agree that since it breaks that shadow line it is kind of distracting. The textures are terrific though and I would never have thought about getting a shot like this, great idea.

When I looked at an enlarged version on my screen, the large wave stands out more adding dimension and not distracting. Did you PP to get those bubbles on the top of the wave? You can see them bending over the top.

[FrankMi]

Did you PP to get those bubbles on the top of the wave?

Thank you for viewing and taking the time to post your thoughts Connie.

I am constantly asking myself 'what if' questions and this image is the result of exploring what might be possible to do with the scene that was before my the day I shot this. Several things came to mind and as a result I shot multiple images of the hot tub to try to capture the different patterns made by the water as it constantly changed.

For the final image I realized that due to the DoF, only the center band of each image was really in focus and because there is no sense of scale or true depth, I wanted the entire image in focus. I looked for interesting patterns in the four images I had taken and selected three images to work with as the water pattern in two of the images were very close.

From two of the images I selected the sharpest center band and looked for a natural top of the water, much like a wave approaching the shore and masked out the water that was above that point.

I then played with the order and position of the two masked images in front of the third, full image. The tall bubble was in the middle ‘wave’. The bottom line is that being an abstract, I can play with the position and order of each of the images and adjust the final image.

I wanted the really sharp, most strongly defined ‘wave’ in front, the most articulated and detailed wave next, and the darker bubbles in the back. I was also shooting for an interesting landscape with meadows, hills, and valleys. Had it not been for the large bubble that looked better up front, I would have moved that wave with the tall bubble further back in the scene.

The neat thing is that I can change the order and position of the waves if it will help improve the image. I am hoping the folks like Mike and yourself will be willing to contribute their thoughts as my ability at constructing a really good abstract is very weak and I have a lot to learn!

This may to be too small to tell much but this is how I used the layers to create the final image:



Layer 1 is the merged image, the next one down is the foreground, the next is the middle ground, the next tis the background, and the last is the one I didn't use.

Hope this helps!

[CLK]

What a good idea, I will have to try that on some of my surf pictures, I have some really dramatic waves, but unfortunately they aren't all in the same picture. I really like the color and transparency of the bubbles. I am still sort of new with my PSE and get really frustrated and do go back often which only delays my learning process.