Beach

[stephljones]

I took this picture in Haiti in 2009. I really thought the rock formation was beautiful, and interesting. The water....well, what can you say...It would be really hard not to think the Caribbean Sea is not beautiful! It was taken with my trusty rusty Canon PowerShot A 630... I have had this little camera for years, and she is not fancy, but I still like her!

What I like about this picture is the waves lapping up...and, I like the small bit of plant in the lower part of the frame.

Please tell me what you think!!! I love critique!!!

[jordanjez193]

Looks a little over processed for my likings.

[OldClicker]

I'm not seeing too much processing on my monitor.

What I do see is too much blank sky and open water. Try cropping almost all the sky and about half the water on the right and see how it looks.

TF

[opus]

It's very pretty. It needs a title, like "Turtle Rock" or something, to give it a little more of a compelling "story". My question always is, "why am I looking at this? Why should other people look at this?" and that's a VERY hard question to answer yourself. That's why critique is good (and sometimes painful).

I think it looks a little oversharpened as well.

I would like to be on that beach right now...

[jordanjez193]

It appears over processed due to the rock and its harsh shadows and holes. But it is just a bad resolution.

And taking away the sky and ocean will take way to much away from the photo.

[GB1]

Welcome to the PR forums Steph. I do like your photo, but can offer a few suggestions for improvement.

One of the biggest things that photographers need to learn is to compose a shot so that some area of the photo acts as a subject. This is a hard, fast rule so to speak, as there are situations where the entire scene is 'the subject', but I think this one needs something, perhaps a person sitting on the beach on the lower right area with an Hawaiian hat on and sipping a Piña colada. As it stands, the rock acts as the subject, but I don't think it's prominent or interesting enough for that. Another pt is that the image looks over-sharpened and possibly over-compressed, causing a lot of reflective edges and 'artifacts' around the rock etc. If the image wasn't sharp you should indeed sharpen it, but only up to the pt that one can't tell that it was processed. If you have reached that pt and it still isn't sharp - alas, you have one for the trash can (don't worry, the rock will still be there for another go sometime). Finally, there is too much sky and not enough sand/beach. If the sky was super interesting - clouds and/or lighting - that would be justified. When it doubt, compose to include the more interesting part.

On the bright side, I really like the way you included the bushes in the lower left. It adds another plane to the photo. The colors are nice and you seem to have shown here what a quiet, isolated part of the beach is like.. no humans around, just doing its thing.

Oh and one more suggestion - I can tell you shot this at around high noon, as the sun is from above. It would probably be better at early morning or near sunset, for the shadows are at more of an angle and the lighting is warmer.

Welcome again,

G

[stephljones]

I agree with the "overprocessed" comments....I went back and looked at the original image, and I liked it more than the one above.

I still straightened the horizon, but this time I cropped out some of the sky.

Let's see how this is....Thanks everyone!!!