A question for the landscape experts...

I took my first long exposure a couple weeks ago. The location is one of my favorites, so I'd love to have it enlarged as a mounted print or canvas to remind us of all of our great trips there. I'm just not really sure if the shot is technically going to stand up to large printing. Much like when I was new at portraiture, I couldn't really judge the quality of a shot.

I'm posting the full shot as well as a 100% crop of the troublesome areas that I see. I'm assuming there was a bit of camera shake involved but I can't quite envision how these areas will look printed at 24x36.

Full shot:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

First of all, it's a beautiful image. Lovely colors in the sky and a very nice composition.

I don't think your exposure was too long at all. The problem is that the ambient light required such a long exposure that the bright, artificial lights on the pier just completely burned out. Light colored areas lit by the pier lights also burned out because they were much brighter than the ambient light. The only way to get around this (that I know of) would be to do an HDR (tough to do with moving clouds and waves) or a manual blend with one exposure for the landscape, another for the pier & buildings and probably one more for the lights.

As for printing, much depends on what paper you use. Heavily textured paper will somewhat hide lack of sharpness, especially when viewed from a distance. Paper without much texture will quickly expose sharpness issues. I think this photo would likely work well with a textured paper. However, I don't think I'd go as large as 24x36. Maybe 16 x 24 with a nice mat?

Hope this helps!

That is a really nice shot. Have you tried to darken the bright spots any in photoshop? You might could do a bit of burning on them and see if it helps.

The bright lights got you.

This is not a 24x36 shot. If you hang it where no one can get close (more than the three feet you mentioned) it may work.

You said you only had three minutes to shoot. Thats not good

Shot at f5.6 I would have tried different apertures. Shot at iso200 I would have also used 400.

When I think I may enlarge a view I shoot several versions.

Thanks for the input on this. I'll try to work on the light issue in PS a little. I have almost no experience retouching landscapes, so I didn't want to do much to it until I knew more. I think a mat would be a good idea for making it seem larger.

I really didn't think it would turn out at all. We were just headed off the beach and I had my tripod with me after shooting my family photo -- figured I'd just set it up and let it run to see what I got. I wish I had more time -- but it will be on my list for next time I'm there!