Hurricane Irene surf pics

These are a few of the better ones I got from the the day after Irene had passed by central Florida. It was WAY bigger the day before, but I wasn't able to get over to get any shots. Thanks for looking!

Those photos make me want to paddle out now!

That was the best surf we've had here in a LOOOONG time. Hoping for another decent swell this wed/thurs from Maria. I'm not really holding my breath though because it's a lot smaller than the other storms and farther off shore. We'll see though.

is it just me, or do they look a bit flat to me? (the pics).

Do you mean the colors in them? If so, I'm guessing the reason for it is because our water here is FAR from the nice pretty blue that you guys have over there and also the position of the sun didn't help with the coloring either. I just didn't have good color contrast to work with.

I played with the white balance and saturation some to bring SOME blue into the water (if I didn't, the water is a drab, ugly green) and overall give them more color and still only ended up with what you see. The originals all look even more muted as far as the colors go.

If you guys have any other suggestions, I'm all ears. I'm still very new to the DSLR/editing game and I always like learning new things.

WayneS wrote in post #13101894
Do you mean the colors in them? If so, I'm guessing the reason for it is because our water here is FAR from the nice pretty blue that you guys have over there and also the position of the sun didn't help with the coloring either. I just didn't have good color contrast to work with.

I played with the white balance and saturation some to bring SOME blue into the water (if I didn't, the water is a drab, ugly green) and overall give them more color and still only ended up with what you see. The originals all look even more muted as far as the colors go.

If you guys have any other suggestions, I'm all ears. I'm still very new to the DSLR/editing game and I always like learning new things.

what you need to do is go the levels in photoshop and raise blackpoint and lower white point and then perhaps also use highlights/shadows tool too, you may also need to lower the midpoint in levels. Sometimes starting with highlights/shadows tool first works better (it does do the extreme of auto setting blackpoint of image to zero though so you would likely need to keep shadows setting high plus lower midpoint in levels).

Thanks, I'll have to give it a shot. I shot them all in RAW and then do all my editing in camera raw because I like the ease of adjusting everything with it. I have CS5, but I haven't ever used it for anything other than taking things out of images and stuff like that.

WayneS wrote in post #13102521
Thanks, I'll have to give it a shot. I shot them all in RAW and then do all my editing in camera raw because I like the ease of adjusting everything with it. I have CS5, but I haven't ever used it for anything other than taking things out of images and stuff like that.

Are you using sRGB for posting on web? If you're not, then colors will look washed out.

Very nice pic's BTW.

Thanks, yes I am using sRGB. These pictures seem to be the only ones I've taken so far that look this flat. For instance, here's one I shot a while back of some flowers my wife had. Granted it was indoors, but there was less editing done here than I did with the surf pictures.

Ahhh, very nice! So did you just mess with the settings you mentioned before, or did you do other things as well? I think I can do those things in camera raw as well, I just need to play with it some more.

Hey good to see another melbourne shooter on here! You post at 2ndlight as well? The water here always looks like crap unless you go from sebastian and south.
Morning to noon shooting is the worst here especially when there are no clouds as when you expose for the surfer it blows out the rest of the image. When I shoot in the morning like this I usually work with the levels to get the surfer looking the best, then duplicate the image on another layer and give it a multiply or overlay, apply a mask and paint to lighten up the surfer and wherever it needs back to the tones it should be. That is when I am doing normal processing, as you can see by my thread for Irene I tend to take things to the darkside when processing but its just my style for being out of the ordinary, not everybody's taste.

I haven't posted up on 2ndlight yet. I'm more of a lurker over there and just check out everybody else's stuff.

Thanks for the hints though. When I get some time, I'm definitely going to have to sit down and try some stuff out to see what I can come up with.

Looks like a bunch of fun out there.

i dont know, i just loaded it into lightroom, and hit auto tone. and boom done. xD