Another Boat Shot

[GB1]

Here's another from a full-moon early evening shoot I did last week. I think I should have used more DOF to get the entire rail sharp. C&Cs?

G

[PhoebeG]

It might have been interesting to shoot this in the vertical and include all of the masts. I like the lighting a lot on this.

Phil G.

[GB1]

Phil - I believe I did, but that it didn't look as good. I'll check and see, post it for comparison.

G

[whoehei02]

it looks so wonderful

[alexkhoo82]

Wooo~ Nice I like the compo very much and the sky color tone~

[GB1]

Thks Alex and whoehei.

Here's a vertical format.

That area with the lights is a problem. Too bright!

[caleb]

I'm a big fan of the vertical. You can try making an oval shape selecting around the overexposed area and heavily feather it then adjust it from there or overlay and play with opacity/eraser tools?

[natgaines]

GB, I like the vertical positioning better, the original post seems to have a bit of space on the right hand side, not sure if it adds anything to it, but I think with the crop it might make the shot look a little squished. I like the coloring on the sky in your vertical shot a little bit better also. Even with that bright lighting I'm going with number two. Beautiful shot, I'm loving the boats. :thumbsup:

[LeeIs]

GB, i prefer the second one definitely.

1st one, looks a bit grainy mostly in the shadows but in the midtones as well. were u shooting high ISO's? I do that sometimes by accident when I forget to change my settings. but when I'm aware of my ISO i never shoot beyond 200. If you got a tripod no need to bump it up at all. I also think that the walk was a bit too central foced. and divides up the shot in not such a charming way. Hmm, I think the lights in the centre are overly distracting as well and just grab a hold of my attention. I'm trying to think of a way to hide the light but can't figure it out. maybe if you were a bit lower u could've hit them behind the vertical poles and that way, they wouldn't have been blown out.

2nd one. Although the highlighst are very bright as well, i prefer this for the nice blue hues up top and the vertical treatment. The walkways position is also a lot better than the former . Ther's a bit of flare going on. but you can fix that with the heel tool in photoshop i think.

[GB1]

Caleb - I think that idea would work. Maybe I'll give it a try sometime this week. btw if you'd like to take a shot at it and have time, feel free!

Nat, Liban - Looks like # 2 wins. I agree that the colors are better. Concerning the grain: I shot these at 500 asa because I was trying to minimize blur caused by boat bob, and, that freakin' walkway isn't the most stable platform in the world (I was feeling vibrations that probably originated down on the boats). What I did on # 2 is use a plug-in to remove grain - it's called Neat Image and the freebie works up to 1200 px I think... I then resharpened it and got away with it for the most part. End result: no more grain!

Thanks for the replies! I was skeptical that these were anything special, but maybe I'll work on the vertical one a bit more and print it out, see what I have (maybe I'll purchase that plug-in so that it works on larger images..)

G

[caleb]

Went with the first selection and did not try past that. You can where I missed and where I may have selected too much. Anyway, put these side by side to see the differences more clearly.

I used a lasso selection, feathered 10 pixels (for the 800 px tall image), put it on a new layer (ctrl-j), brought up level adjustment (ctrl-l), and dragged the black arrow to the right until it looked close. It may not be dark enough, it may be too dark, this took literally 20 seconds. I'll let you fine tune your larger res image and put the time in yourself Good luck, great photo.

edit/ If you have this in RAW, I would use the same basic technique to bring a different exposure of that area into the photo. I tried a little more editing by sliding the other bars in levels after selecting around the blown out boats... With the image at this size/resolution, it would be hard to do much more and keep the quality reasonable.

[petershin_95]

looks great...!

[GB1]

Caleb -

Thanks for your edit! I do think it looks better, but at the same time there is only so much one can do, reason being it appears that all detail in those overexposed areas was lost and that there's not much one can do PP-wise (besides redrawing it by hand) to recover it. :cryin: :mad2: It sort of reminds me of shooting slide film, where the latitude was very thin. I don't have a RAW of this btw ... I stopped doing those awhile ago because my computer was way too slow to reasonably edit them (I have since upgraded the computer, so maybe I will try RAWs again... But then I need to learn what I am doing.. that's a lot harder!!!)

Thanks again for taking a whack. I will probably play with it some more. And, think about how to correct this during exposure for next time.

G

[Wild Wassa]

As a bateau boy, I find the horizintal image very pleasing. Today is stormy here so I've got today off work ... I'm missing being on the boat, the top shot makes up for it in a very pleasent way.

The wooden planked sloop and the large multihull says a lot about today's cruising sailors and their different approaches to boats and their commitments to the sea and sailing.

Sailing and navigating at night is a beautiful thing to do. The different nav aids on boats and in the channels and the city lights are well photographed. I find a lot to think about in a shot like the first image.

... but the vertical image just glares at me of very ordinary lazy sailors with their permanently roller furled jibs (not at all cool to someone who treats forsails god like), fat low tech inefficient aluminium masts and the gangway for carrying bags of ice to the boat for a booze cruise. That is what the vertical image implies.

Technically?

I'm not at all interested in what the image is like technically unless it is awful. There is enough to amuse me about the shot ... just in identifying the boats.

Warren.

[readingr]

I prefer this to the other post.

Shame about the blown out area and to be honest I prefer the landscape to the portrait crop. Nice edit caleb.

Roger

[gahspidy]

GB, I prefer everything about the original over the second vertical shot. The vertical shot to me feels too tight and busy, aside from the over- exposure. The original landscape shot has a good mood to it with room to breath and invites me to walk down and have a look about.
I prefer the masts cut off at the tops rather than having the sides so tight around the boats.

Actually, this is a tough scene to capture because of how busy it is. I have come across marinas like this, especially at night and while tempted to stop and take a shot I have always felt it was not worth it because of the problems in isolating any one strong area.
I commend you for trying and for somewhat pulling it off. I still feel it is busy, but the original works best for me.

[GB1]

Thanks Warren, Roger, and Gary ( and Peter) - To be quite honest, I have always liked the horizontal one more but I honestly don't know why. I think that although the vertical one is more 'technically correct' and violates less rules than the horizontal, it just doesn't have the soul the first one does. Warran, your post got me thinking about that... it's still a mystery, but there's something to be said about an image that you feel like you can stretch your elbows out, rather than try to reach up and touch the sky. I still like the colors better in the second post though; personal taste, I suppose.

Gary, IMHO boats are a lot, lot harder to successfully capture than they look! When you're walking or driving by they seem so relaxing, so photographic, but when you get down there and start shooting it just doesn't work. I still feel that there's shots to be had at marinas though - I'll figure it out eventually!

G

[readingr]

Gary, IMHO boats are a lot, lot harder to successfully capture than they look! When you're walking or driving by they seem so relaxing, so photographic, but when you get down there and start shooting it just doesn't work. I still feel that there's shots to be had at marinas though - I'll figure it out eventually!

G

Oh so true. I have 1000's of marina photo's which are total rubbish ans I'm still looking for the perfect capture of the emotion that it gives you when passing buy.

Roger R.