Fishermens Grotto S.F.

[Bm7b5]

My wife got this one in San Francisco last summer.

I like.

[David]

Hi Bm7b5 I seem to remember this pier from a visit some years ago - there were lots of seals. But perhaps all the piers have seals. However, on to the image. I wonder if this is a photo that would benefit from a change of format to 2:1 width to height. That would emphasise the fishing boats and crop out the "busyness" of the tackle, masts, lights etc. on the staging. I find myself drawn to such shots when I'm around a harbour, but rarely feel that I've got anything other than a documentary shot.

Cheers

David

[Davey]

I really like the water. I think the background is unavoidably busy, even if could retake shot it'd be hard to alter the dof so the background is out of focus significantly but keeping the [whole length of] boats sharp.

Post processing techniques are probably the only way to shift focus more toward the boats. I'm not really the man to advise on best oiptions but my idea is crop the top a little, mask off background and blur it a little (but keep natural look). Maybe drop the saturation of the background a little too, along with the brightness and contrast to lessen the impact of it. If you did that right then it could still look natural but the background wouldn't distract from the subject as much I reckon. Slight edit on the boats themselves might shift the focus yet some more, eg. dodge/burn and a little increased vibrance and contrast to make them stand out a tiny bit over the other elements.

I like the shot as it is still. I just think pulling the focus toward the boats would help increase their impact and lessen the busy feel but ( although that might have been what she wanted to capture). If you could as a minor tweak cloning out the post in the foreground might help but probably wont pull the eyes too much, for me it's more the boats and background that grabs my focus. Interestingly it seems to be the pier fence level where my gaze is pulled (ie. the top horizontal 3rds line) so if you crop it to get the boats closer to this it would help. Downside is you lose more of the rigging so maybe not a pure rule of 3rds crop although doing this the attention is shifted to the hull which is good. Again just my opinion and might not be suitable, but hopefully helpful.

[ajith.rajeswari]

Hi Bm7b5,
Nice shot, looks better in 2:1 ratio i feel, the only concern I have is about the sharpness (a bit over I feel), have you sharpened it during post processing?

~Ajith

[Bm7b5]

Yes, it is definitely busy, but I find myself liking the business for some reason.

As for PP sharpening, yes I did sharpen it, and no, I didn't know what I was doing, and yes, I did over do it.