From a Room with a View

[eland]

http://home.iprimus.com.au/dee333/room-jpg.jpg

Striking while the light and balance are right :)

eland

[Conk]

No kidding. Excellent Eland. I'm going to assume though that the larger version hasn't the noise.

[pappy]

This is a tremendous photo, Eland! The composition and exposure are perfect. What a beautiful bay and the sky finishes it off wonderfully.

Regards,
Peter

[eland]

Thank you Colin and Peter for your kind words.

This is not a casual snapshot but was carefully worked out.

*The late afternoon sun giving soft even light and
catching the fronts of the waves.

* The sky was giving a reading 1 1/2 stops brighter than
the foreground.
The chosen exposure was off the sky,
letting the foreground go dark.
It was most important to have the clouds properly exposed.

* Also most important to have substantial clouds to balance
the tree. No use having the tree against a bland blue sky.
That would have unbalanced the picture and I wouldn't
even have taken the camera out of its bag.

* The timing was careful to catch the back wave before
it disappeared behing the tree.

* Because the picture is largely low key, a white border was chosen
to compliment and "brighten" the waves.

Note: 1. A small red roof and a lamp post were removed from
the foreground.
Otherwise no post processing at all. Just size reduction for the web.

2. This is the entire image. No cropping.
Taken at 35mm equivalent. ( slight wide angle )

Again, many thanks

eland

[henkbos]

Excellent shot. On my laptop it seems that the whites are a little over sharpened.

[eland]

Thanks Henk.
As stated above, aside from removing a red roof and lamp post, there has been no editing at all.
Nothing at all.

No cropping, no levels, no curves, no sharpening.....
Nothing.

The low sun to the left is catching the waves, as intended.

Check the long shadow on the beach.

Shutter speed quite high. Around 500th sec.

Kind regards
eland

[pappy]

Eland, thank you for laying out the process you went through in making this image - it is very helpful to me and reminds me this is not just a casual pastime if one hopes for results like this.

Regards,
Peter

[slejhamer]

Great stuff, eland. The highlights along the tree, clouds and waves are great.

Quick question: did you spot meter? Thanks.

[eland]

Dear Peter and Mitch

Thank you both for your kind comments.
They are very much appreciated.

When I occasionally get something right, Peter, I'm happy to share
how it was done.

Here is one other little "trade secret" that I used to obtain this image
and that I have not yet mentioned.

I was actually standing on a ladder leaning up against the wall !
The reason for this is the little tree in the center.
From ground level it is just too high and overlaps the headland,
so that there is no water visible between the tree and the land.

Being 14 feet higher separates the two and one can now see
water and surf beyond the tree.
...... A little point, but important.

In answering your question Mitch, No, no spot meter was used.

A true Spotmeter has a viewing angle of One Degree
and for most purposes they give more trouble than help.

Ideally one would want to use an Incident Light Meter,
or take a reading off an 18 % reflectance Gray Card.
ie Zone 5.

My perch was not in sunshine (ie not in the same light conditions as the subject)
so that neither of these two methods would have worked.

I prefer Center Weighted metering for shots like this rather than Evaluative Metering.
Think of the Center Weighted Meter as a very wide Spot Meter.
It is rather more directional than the Evaluative meter.

It showed the sky to be one and a half stops brighter than
the beach and sea and the sky reading was the one chosen for the whole image.

I hope this helps.

Again, thank you both very much for taking the trouble and time to comment.

Sincerely
hal
eland