Sunset in San Diego (02/2001 - Canon G1)

[phuocle]

At the urging of Eric F., I'm posting my picture I took of a beautiful San Diego sunset back in February. Shot in large, super-fine JPG mode, the only thing done afterwards was level correction in Photoshop. I also used a Tiffen orange graduated filter to accent the sunset colors.

Let me know what you think.

http://www.phuoc.com/_images/photos/IMG_0026.JPG

- Phuoc
phuoc@phuoc.com
http://www.phuoc.com

[Andrei]

I love it. Thank you.

[Eric F.]

Thanks for posting this picture.

As I had mentioned I love this shot, I really liked the color and the composition is very good. The only thing that I would do for this picture would be to crop the dark spot at the bottom(probably a bird) out of the picture, it is distracting. Sunsets are great place to take a lot of shots at all different settings. Bracketing the exposures are very good for sunsets. Also when you do this the unexpected sometimes happens. Here is an example of a bird in a picture that I didn't even know was there untill I was picking through my shots. This shot was not the best in terms of composition but was my "keeper" because of the bird. I LOVE DIGITAL:)
http://home.att.net/~ozarke/wsb/media/69185/site1048.jpg

[JCDoss]

Few minor points, and all are of a compositional nature.

I think that if you were to crop this image and discard the lower half, it would be excellent. I see a few flaws in the lower half of the frame which include:
1) A black thing (a bird?) floating on the water near the sun's reflection which is a distraction.
2) Another black thing at the very bottom center of the frame (another bird in flight?).
3) Blown out highlights in the waves in the sun's reflection.
4) A greenish, amorphous blob on the lower right of the frame which looks like lens flare.

The upper half of the frame is excellent, and cropping out the lower half would give you a sort of panoramic-like view which I think would be attractive in this shot.

JCDoss

[phuocle]

JCDoss wrote:
Few minor points, and all are of a compositional nature.

The upper half of the frame is excellent, and cropping out the lower half would give you a sort of panoramic-like view which I think would be attractive in this shot.

JCDoss

Great idea! I'll give it a try and see what it looks like cropped. Eric had the same notion about the bird in the bottom half of the frame.

I'm not sure what I can do about the highlighs from the reflection in the water; if I properly expose that, then the rest of the image would be way too dark. Suggestions on how to combat this?

[JCDoss]

phuocle wrote:
I'm not sure what I can do about the highlighs from the reflection in the water; if I properly expose that, then the rest of the image would be way too dark. Suggestions on how to combat this?

The only real suggestion I have would have been to bracket maybe -1/0/+1 and merge the -1 and +1 shots to get a deeper dynamic range. That's all water under the bridge now (no pun intended!).

JCDoss