Sunset at Coast, West Clare, Ireland

[fatboy]

Heres this weekends best effort - what do people think of it?

Dave

[Themage]

I think it looks great . I see a lens flare that takes away from the moment for me. The misty rocks that fade away on the right look great. The image looks like of low rez as the colors in the clouds give it away. Still a great sunset shot. Mabye alittle too much sky also.

[fatboy]

tnx for the thoughts - one question: how might i have avoided the sun flare? Most
of the shots I took in that session had flare of some sort, as the sun was very
bright on the horizon...

Also, i haven't processed the photo at all - are there any editing tricks i could use
to remove the flare sucessfully?

Dave

[CLKunst]

I'm not sure there is anything that will correct the flare. In this case it is what it is. Were there clouds in front of the sun when you shot this? As far as not getting the flare when you are taking the picture I think that might depend on how much control you have over your equipment. I would have underexposed by at least half a step to compensate for the over brightness of the sun. But there would not have been as much detail in your coastline so it's a balancing act between sunset and coast exposures.

I'm not sure that made sense perhaps some one else can explain it a little better.

[Seb]

Heres this weekends best effort - what do people think of it?

Dave

I like your composition but I find the sun (and the flare) to be somewhat distracting. Perhaps my comment doesn't make sense (that's a sunset photograph after all!) but I would have prefered the same composition shot few minutes later so the sun would be lower and dimer.

I assume that the flare could be less apparent if you were to slightly underexpose the shot. By doing so, the whole frame get darker but you can retrieve a certain amount of details by applying a "contrast mask". Here is a good explanation about the procedure with Photoshop. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...-masking.shtml

regards

Seb

[anew]

Hi Dave,

photoshop can be a great tool for eliminating certain things, although lens flare can be one of the hardest to work on. i generally use cloning and the colour replacement tool (which can be very useful in this area), and just working away until you get a suitable result. (make sure you keep the original layer though in case things go horibly wrong!).

I've enclosed a quick patch up job on your photo here using those tools, hope you don't mind...see if the results help in any way.

I like the photo by the way, beautiful colours...west clare is one of my favourite spots in ireland, especially during clancy week in miltown malbay!

cheers
anew.

[fatboy]

I've enclosed a quick patch up job on your photo here using those tools, hope you don't mind...see if the results help in any way.

Feck... Thats very good, Anew - I had a go at patching the original myself last night, but nowhere near as good as your "quick patch job" :-) It was still really obvious where I had messed with the image...

Ah well, not to worry - just glad people thought it was a nice photo... I have some other ones from the w/e - might post them when I get home...

Dave

[srobb]

Nice pic, dave. And a nice redo by anew. The only thing I would suggest is that you first take your meter reading from one of the darker areas you want details in then recompose the shot and take it.