C&C Beginner

Beginner, bought a 40D recently and since then has caught the photography bug. Hoping to improve and build skills to advance to stock photography ... but for now, trying to learn as much as I can to improve skills/knowledge and eventually buy better equipment. I appreciate your constructive criticism.

Location: Huntington Beach, CA
Time: Around sunset after a sudden rainfall.

I rushed to the beach as the sun descended behind a bunch of storm clouds... I was hoping to capture that moment.

Hey Steven, nice attempt. Generally composition is fine, and time of day works well. My only critique would be two things; 1) a standard thing, check your horizon. You are about 2 or 3 degrees off here. Not a killer thing, but easily fixed. 2) the image looks like it has some recovery done to it in that it has a greyish tint to it. I have seen this typically when highlights are reduced. I am not sure that is the case here, but to me it just has that feel. But those are it. Otherwise, a well conceived image.

Hi I am new to this also. I would agree regarding the horizon definitely needs a bit of work to straighten ( i just simply used iphoto). Love the picture otherwise though, great reflected colour of the sun. Well done

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I think it's a little flat so I pushed the curves around a bit to give it more blacks and brighter highlights. I left the horizon alone. Just wanted to give you an idea of making the surfer just a silhouette. I may have gone too far; but here's a go at it.

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Thank you all for the pointers...

Croasdail: Wow, I completely forgot the actual horizon. I was distracted by all the horizontal lines going across (clouds, waves, etc.) that I forgot to check the REAL horizon. The day was very gray overcast but I'll try to remove that in PP.

SwingBopper: Maybe I didn't calibrate my monitor correctly? I looked at your adjustment and I think I understand your point about it being a little flat. I tried to make the surfer become a silhouette also but it brought out a lot of noise in the picture. Perhaps I can selectively dodge the face since he's in a black wetsuit.

I'll try to play around with it in post and see if I can make it better.

Have you got a ND grad filter? These work well with this type of photo.

fadetoblack22 wrote in post #6506454
Have you got a ND grad filter? These work well with this type of photo.

I don't have a ND filter but it was already difficult shooting this hand held because of low light. Perhaps if I had a f/2.8 lens it and ND filter... I'll look into it.

scslmd wrote in post #6509845
I don't have a ND filter but it was already difficult shooting this hand held because of low light. Perhaps if I had a f/2.8 lens it and ND filter... I'll look into it.

or get a nice light tripod. that would be a lot cheaper than a f/2.8 lens.