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Another early morning dawn seascape shoot - this time at Little Bay (in Sydney's eastern suburbs). None of us has shot here before so we were taking a bit of a punt but it turned out to be a great location, the swell was awesome and we were lucky enough to have good colour and cloud in the sky with not too much wind nor any rain. All in all a very pleasant morning.

We met at Little Bay (near the golf course) at 5:45AM which gave us half an hour or so to walk down and along the coast in the dark to setup to catch both the pre dawn show and sunrise at 6:52AM.

Five minutes before sunrise at 6:47AM

Edge of the Abyss

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1.0 sec at f / 14, ISO 100

At sunrise (6:52AM)

Reflections of Dawn

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 0.4 sec at f / 14, ISO 100

Five minutes after sunrise (6:57AM) - I was really happy with how this shot turned out (from the nice water movement at 1 second, the water rushing off the curved rocky ledge out in the ocean, the great stripe of clouds and colour in the sky to the nice highlight which strikes the green grass on the headland across from us) - the photography gods smiled on me for once.

Heavens Glory

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 1.0 sec at f / 16, ISO 100

Whilst walking back along the coast towards the track up to where we parked we walk across a beach (8:30AM) and one end is absolutely covered in interesting things - masses of shells of all sizes, shapes and colours, ground and smoothed pieces of old coloured glass, varieties of seaweed, very interesting stones, moss covered rocks, sea urchin shells and on and on. It was a treasure trove of stuff and I wished I'd brought my macro lens

Suren got out his extension tubes and off camera flash and gave them a try to good effect whilst I just used my Tamron 17-50mm at MFD (27cm - about 15cm from the front of the lens) and did the best I could with that - not macro but interesting stuff none the less.

Message Lost

NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 50 mm, 1/60 sec at f / 8.0, ISO 125

Rodney, It was great to catch up with you.

#1 Nice compo but I reckon that foreground rock 'blocks' the flow a little.
#2 Nailed the timing on the light there.
#3 compo is not as strong
#4 I reckon you could try to slightly desaturate the background and add clarity/sharpness and saturation to the bottletop

surenj wrote:Rodney, It was great to catch up with you.

Likewise

#1 Nice compo but I reckon that foreground rock 'blocks' the flow a little.

What do you reckon if I pano crop it to remove the bottom 20% or so

#2 Nailed the timing on the light there.

Thanks - I was in two mind between this shot and another I took moments before (with a different compo - it's a little further back and has the horizon near the top of the frame - so more looking down into the reflection) - I'm trying to decide which I like better...

#3 compo is not as strong
#4 I reckon you could try to slightly desaturate the background and add clarity/sharpness and saturation to the bottletop

surenj wrote:#4 I reckon you could try to slightly desaturate the background and add clarity/sharpness and saturation to the bottletop

Thoughts?

Looking pretty good here Rodney.

#2 could do with a bit more contrast + saturation in that red/orange/yellow sliver just above the horizon.
#4, what no Tamron 90mm? Looks pretty good, esp the re-work

Remorhaz wrote:What do you reckon if I pano crop it to remove the bottom 20% or so

Tricky I reckon. I'd me more inclined to clone that rock out and recreate the waves . It will be a great exercise in PS.

I think I prefer the rework.

Going against the grain... but I like the first bottle shot.

Remorhaz wrote:

surenj wrote:#2 Nailed the timing on the light there.

Thanks - I was in two mind between this shot and another I took moments before (with a different compo - it's a little further back and has the horizon near the top of the frame - so more looking down into the reflection) - I'm trying to decide which I like better...

Here is the first shot I took - when I first looked at them in Lightroom my initial gut feel was that this was the better shot and then I mulled over them and ended up letting other factors take over and choose the second to post - I still feel like I like the shot below better even though it has less of the cool sky so I'd be keen to hear what others think?

surenj wrote:

Remorhaz wrote:What do you reckon if I pano crop it to remove the bottom 20% or so

Tricky I reckon. I'd me more inclined to clone that rock out and recreate the waves . It will be a great exercise in PS.

Are you talking about removing that rock in the bottom left corner (which was what I was thinking of) or the one out in the middle?

Bonus: Here is one of our removing time and space images - the ten stopper - 120 second exposure...

Remorhaz wrote:Are you talking about removing that rock in the bottom left corner (which was what I was thinking of) or the one out in the middle?

The one out in the middle. For me it blocks the 'flow' of the eye around the image. It will be a hell of a job cloning it though.

surenj wrote:

Remorhaz wrote:Are you talking about removing that rock in the bottom left corner (which was what I was thinking of) or the one out in the middle?

The one out in the middle. For me it blocks the 'flow' of the eye around the image. It will be a hell of a job cloning it though.

I might give it a go

I've reassessed my cropping of my third (my favourite) image and come to the conclusion I didn't know what the F%^$ I was doing when I pano cropped it. I've decided I prefer it in it's original shot as follows - what do others think (and would you clone out that rock protruding in the bottom left corner)?

Remorhaz wrote:Another early morning dawn seascape shoot - this time at Little Bay (in Sydney's eastern suburbs). None of us has shot here before so we were taking a bit of a punt but it turned out to be a great location,

ye of little faith, ya can always pick good locations based on satelite imagery

Remorhaz wrote:I've reassessed my cropping of my third (my favourite) image and come to the conclusion I didn't know what the F%^$ I was doing when I pano cropped it. I've decided I prefer it in it's original shot as follows - what do others think (and would you clone out that rock protruding in the bottom left corner)?

pano crop, all that water in the bottom is doing nothing for the composition imo.

The bottle neck/top shot is nice, my only suggestion would be to angl ethe top so that it faces inwards towards the viewer rather than out of teh frame...easy in hindsight..

I prefer the non-desaturated version to btw.

The first and second images could even work as portrait crop version imo, the darkeness on th eextreme edges is a bit offputting, howeve rthats a personal preference in this case.

Remorhaz wrote:Here is the first shot I took - when I first looked at them in Lightroom my initial gut feel was that this was the better shot and then I mulled over them and ended up letting other factors take over and choose the second to post - I still feel like I like the shot below better even though it has less of the cool sky so I'd be keen to hear what others think?

this one would work as the portrait crop i reckon.

biggerry wrote:ye of little faith, ya can always pick good locations based on satelite imagery

Hmmm...

pano crop, all that water in the bottom is doing nothing for the composition imo.

Thanks Gerry - I still like the one with the extra water - for me it sort of gives the shot something to stand on?

It's interesting about your portrait crop suggestions below - I didn't take portrait versions of most (probably all) the images below - however I did take portrait composition versions of this third image (and there's lots of water at the bottom for you ).

The bottle neck/top shot is nice, my only suggestion would be to angl ethe top so that it faces inwards towards the viewer rather than out of teh frame...easy in hindsight..

- at the time I took this I was mainly thinking about the direction of light (sun) (i.e. having it come up from behing the tube and lighting the inside)

I prefer the non-desaturated version to btw.

Me too - however I've left the negative clarity and sharpness on the background to try and hide some of the more ugly bokeh this lens seems to have

The first and second images could even work as portrait crop version imo, the darkeness on th eextreme edges is a bit offputting, howeve rthats a personal preference in this case.

Interesting I might take a look at that - thanks

Remorhaz wrote:Here is the first shot I took...

this one would work as the portrait crop i reckon.

How about a square?

I prefer the square and the original of the
broken glass.

Remorhaz wrote:
How about a square?

nup, i reckon portrait, i think its about concentrating on the key elements, this being the sun and the water pool reflections - the rest is pure chaff imo. cropping from the right to get the bottom right hand corner to intersect with the rocks that 'appear' to have those lines that point to the top left seems to work in my eyes, using those lines helps lead the viewer up into the image...

Just going back through some of these images and especially any that my family and friends liked and I was wondering what people thought of the following:


NIKON D7000 + 17.0-50.0 mm f/2.8 @ 17 mm, 25 sec at f / 11, ISO 100

I like this one too...