Oceanside Beach, OR

I got a new (to me) 10-22 lens and took it for a spin out at Oceanside this last weekend. These are in chronological order as the sun set over about 2 hours. I played around in post quite a bit going for different moods in each photo. All critique is welcome. Thanks, Chris

I thought this was Oceanside, CA for a second, and then I reread the title. Grr, *shakes fist.* Beautiful place, wish I lived up there, haha. I think your strongest photo is the second to last one. 3 is next up and then 1 mostly because of their foregrounds. 3 has better light than 1 and the still waves are pretty dynamic. 4 you went a little bit too far down with the shading up top. Are you using a grad ND filter?

Edit: oh whoops, confused this with the critique corner thread.

Thanks for the critique idkdc - I did say it is welcome and I have a lot of room to get better at this. I didn't use an ND grad filter in the field. All of the photos except the 4th are a single shot with shadows boosted quite a lot. Also most have an ND filter applied in lightroom. #4 is the exception - it is 3 bracketed shots mixed by hand in photoshop elements. I found that quite cumbersome, actually and need to find a better way to blend. The 2nd to last is my favorite composition, but unfortunately I only have the single shot of that one so I can't try to improve it by blending in alternate exposures.

Chris

No problem, Chris. Yeah, there are better ways to blend if you're editing by the pixel, but all of them require some form of hand-tuning anyways and most of the tutorials are meant for Photoshop Creative Suite. I'll need to relearn them again since I learned about them a while back if I want to try this type of photography again, although I just ordered a lee grad nd filter, so that will be my crutch for now when I'm pressed for time. I have to say that you're still miles ahead of a lot of photographers that I've personally met with more gear. Keep it up! Honestly, I didn't find the single exposure on the second to last photo a problem at all. Actually digging the deep blacks on it. It might be stronger with a little bit less clipping and brightening up on certain, but it's already a strong photo because of your composition and timing with the waters. Although maybe I'm biased to deep blacks right now because of some great journalism/sports pictures I've perused recently that incorporate silhouettes against a backdrop.

Nice way to spend a few hours. Numbers 3, 5 and 6 are my favorites. You must have staked out the locations ahead of time and really moved fast to catch that many sunsets.

Jon Clemens wrote in post #17269429
Nice way to spend a few hours. Numbers 3, 5 and 6 are my favorites. You must have staked out the locations ahead of time and really moved fast to catch that many sunsets.

I was there early in the day scouting the location so I had a good idea of where I wanted to be relative to the sea stacks in the background. But, with the tide and waves changing the foreground rocks changed quite a bit. I was moving all over for the 2 hours composing with different foreground rocks and striations in the sand. Many times I had to quickly uproot and retreat from a larger than average wave in the middle of a set of exposures . It was quite fun.

You have some amazing shots! I'm also getting into some landscape stuff and these look great. Do you have any high res? I'd love to make one or two my computer background.

Beautiful set.