Dana Sunrise (Seascape) + Landscape colours discussion

Earlier this year, in taking a sunrise walk along the beach at Dana Bay, I saw a very appealing diagonal composition, and decided to photograph it. This is fairly sparsely populated area, and more often than not the pair of footprints you and a loved one beside you leave are the first ones for the day.


(Canon EOS 1D MkII N @ ISO 125, EF 28-300L @ 28mm @ f/10, 1/332s)

Typically, when people post e.g. sunrise shots with seascapes, they saturate + sharpen the heck out them, ending up with a vivid image of oranges, blues and whites. However, this is, more often than not, not what it really looked like. In this image, i wanted to retain the original feel of the darker, muted colours, relying instead on composition, as well as textures/tones to make it interesting.

I am not sure if I succeeded? Would the subtlety of this image be improved upon if instead, more typically, the colours and contrast is pushed? Or does it stand on its own?

(this is not a request to post altered versions, but rather a discussion / critique request)

Hi,

For me landscape photography is all about conveying a mood to the viewer, taking the mind into the scene and allowing the imagination to create the scene outside the bounds of the frame.

I think your image stands on its own, and it really works for me - the ocean has turbulent look and I love the haze created by the spray as the image recedes. In this case I think saturated colours would be at odds with the scene. The subtlety comes from the lack of saturation and would be otherwise diminshed.

Now for palm trees on desert islands I like the saturated look - it's how I see the landscape in my mind and, for me, it conveys the mood of the scene.

Thank you for your comments, Andrew. What an insightful outlook on Landscape photography...

Now, wouldn't it be interesting to see a Landscape photograph of a desert island that challenges your (rather typical I imagine, since I also share it) vision - the bright sunlit, saturated look. Maybe a B&W image of a storm, or with fog, etc.

Has anybody reading this taken a very atypical "desert island" landscape?

Very nice photo Dawid. I don't think I'd opt for more saturation (or messing with the sky/ocean much at all), but I might experiment with bringing up the tonality in the hill slopes (shadows) and perhaps beach using HDR layering. I'll bet that to the eye they were more discernible, and this would add more interest to the image.

- DL

Thanks Don, I will try this. The sun was so bright, that I had already pulled up the levels of the hills / sand quite a bit, but I guess it could do with more to balance out the image.

I also through cropping a bit off the right would balance the image even more, adding a diagonal sense of symmetry.

For Asher (Lens discussion)

Based on the lens discussion in Ben's thread, I though I'd discuss my choice here - my (old faithful) EF 28-300L. Especially in situations like these (windy, walking next to the see, lens changes undesirable) I believe this lens is the ultimate landscape lens, at least for my needs (I'm shooting a 8.2MP camera, not sure how it'll fare with a 16+MP).

Why? Because, even though the lens really is not great wide open, stopped down to f/8 - f/16 it is, I believe, very sharp - and this is where you want to shoot in anyway for most landscape images. Secondly, though I also believe (like Ben) that most good landscape images are actually in the telephoto range, there are those times when you'll feel very frustrated because your 70-200 doesn't go wide or long enough for the shot you want, and with the 28-300 you have very good IS all the way, so there is no need to carry a tripod around unless you want to do long exposures. And for hiking or a walk next to the beach, even if you could change lenses, you don't want to cart them along.

Since this lens sucks for general indoor and low-light photography, as a general tool for creative landscape photography, I think it excels. Again, I can't vouch for how good it is on a very high resolution sensor - but I can vouch for the general image quality and the colour rendering.

Dawid, I don't think I'd crop any of the right off - the loss of the ocean doesn't compensate the corner leading, but if you already cropped top/bottom you might consider restoring some.

- DL