Coastal pine C&C welcome

[tbob]

These tough survivors always intrigue me whether on exposed cliffs, mountain tops or coasts

[AB26]

Hi Trevor,

Great shot, I like the composition.

However: there seems to be something on the rocks that looks like it has been over PP’d. Seeing that the tree is your main subject I would have liked to see a bit more of it. Like having it better exposed, instead of having concentrated exposure on the water, and including the base where it grows from. More focus on the tree, blurring the background a little, would also have emphasised that the tree is the main subject.

My eye is drawn to the sea and then to the hills in the background instead of the tree.

Thanks for sharing.

[tbob]

Thanks Andre; The rocks look a little strange, I suspect mainly because they are volcanic and have a very rough and almost fractal surface with a lot of texture. Plus the rock is that warm brown, almost yellow colour. Juxtaposed with the light rocks and the surf they do look over saturated and oversharpened.

I agree about the lighting on the tree. It bothers me that the underside of the foliage is so dark. I did try lightening, but it just didn't look right; too pale and washed out. The shot was done at noon so the contrast between light and shadow is very pronounced. The problem with vacation pictures is the lack of ability to come back multiple times to try again in better conditions.

Just to the left of this tree the shoreline vegetation starts again. I would like to have included the base, it was either isolate the tree by cutting off the base or include a large trunk of an adjacent tree.

Blurring the background slightly is an option I will place in my mental checklist for options in future. When I get something like this I need to spend more time mucking about trying things. Hard on vacation unless you are alone. The pressure to move on, from the other people you are with is something I find hard to resist.

[Geoff F]

For me, Trevor. I'm confused over which is the main subject.

At the moment, a large expanse of foreground is dominating the scene. I would want to reduce that by half.

But that causes another problem over the cropping ratio. Has this already been cropped? Otherwise possibly crop square? You may be able to lose a little from the sides. Could you get away with a 5 x 4 ratio crop?

From a purely personal view; I like to see my surf sharp so I would have used a much faster shutter speed. And taken my exposure settings from spot metering on the surf.

Finally, the little item . . .

I would clone out that distant buoy near the left edge. If it was bigger and a little further from the edge I would be happy to leave it.

Basically, a good shot is to be had here but at the moment this isn't using the full potential of the scene.

[Donald]

I like the composition, although i would endorse Geoff's suggestion of looking at losing a bit from the bottom (and going to a 4:5 ratio). I don't think it needs all that rock at the bottom to 'tell the story'. I'd also take out that buoy, as once you see it you keep looking at it.

But other than that ...............

I certainly wouldn't be putting any blur on anything. The tree holds centre stage, but the 'story', I think, is of this tree in its setting/its environment. For me the tree is not the image. The whole scene is the image. And, again from my point of view and from that perspective, it works very, very well.

What I do particularly like and it might be accident or design (don't admit it if it was accident), is the fact that the lower branch coming off the main branch at the top right of the tree, is just resting on the beach. If you had been just one or two inches higher, you would have cut the beach and the lowest point of that branch would have been on the water. It isn't and that works really well. It allows the beach to go off into the distance and not be fragmented/cut up, as it would otherwise have been

[tbob]

Thanks Geoff and Donald.

The tree limb was not intentional, although I am prepared to take full credit for it.

I tried the crop.

[Donald]

Y'know, I'm not at all sure that this is an improvement. I think you called it right with the original.

[tbob]

I flipped back and forth, along with three of my co workers; the jury comes down as: both. Two votes for original and two for the crop. With your vote the original is ahead.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Trevor,

I really feel you'd be better off downsizing this to 1000px tall and applying some gentle output sharpening (USM 70%, 0.3px, 0 or 1 threshold) before posting.

As posted here, both these are way too tall to be viewed at 100% (i.e. 1:1 pixels) on our screens.

They are 1599px tall, which tells me you probably uploaded the full size image and let TinyPic limit it to those 1599px on longest edge.

I am always (literally) dismayed when I see members take a great picture, but then present it far less than optimally by;
a) not downsizing it to something that'll fit most screens 1:1 and/or
b) not sharpen it after downsizing

Not that this looks too bad at all when viewed 1:1, although it could be better - but it certainly is not as sharp as it should be when viewed 'full picture' for compositional discussion (because our browser is then averaging the pixels to fit it on our screens). Check it out; compare the rock detail at 100% and full picture, the latter is much softer.

Trevor, you are by no means the only person that does this and it is something of a personal obsession for me trying to educate people, I hope you don't mind me using your image to promote this message.

In these times of LCD screens, it is vitally important (for sharpness) that viewers see an image with 1:1 pixel mapping on their screens.


I am trying to think of an analogy (or three) for not doing this;
* pouring a full quart into an overflowing pint pot on a desert island when you cannot afford to lose the water you waste
* not collecting your change from a vending machine
* running the heating in winter (or a/c in summer) 'full pelt' with all the windows and doors open

point made everyone?



Now, I'll climb down off my hobby horse and admit that my personal failing is shooting thousands of pictures which never make it off my HDD - not even the 1% of half decent ones
How's that for daft?

Oh, by the way, I'd crop between these two

Cheers,

[tbob]

Not a problem using this as an example, helpful actually. One question though; I don't know if you can extrapolate your expertise to Aperture, but would this by like saving a Version to Fit 1024X1024?

By the way if this is a bad as your rants on pet obsessions gets then remind me never to expose you to one of mine!