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A few pics from the weekend outing at Boat Harbour near Nelson Bay. Click a pic for a larger version. All three taken with the 24-120 VR. As always, comments both good and bad are much appreciated.

This is Boat Harbour beach. Nice eh!




...and a little abstract I call Devil in the details. Don't know why

Stubbsy, that first pic is definitely top notch The pic really suffers from jpg conversion tho as the water towards the horizon looks blocky

The second pic, not too sure if it's a WB issue but the girls look bluish purple for me.

That third pic is just....

Hi Peter. The first one is the winner for me. I really like it. The water looks really nice and refreshing, and a really nice colour too.

Regards,
Owen.

Good stuff, Peter. I really like the comp on the first one.

Peter,
At the risk of sounding patronising, which I don't mean, your photography has improved tremendously and you are now taking consistently great shots.
#1 is great, composition is nice.
I like the movement in #2 and the colour in 3.
Great shots

PiroStitch wrote:The second pic, not too sure if it's a WB issue but the girls look bluish purple for me.

The water was cold.

Peter, I especially like the first shot. I scrolled it up on my monitor to remove the background rocks, leaving just the girl and the water - to my eye it makes a better image.

Frank

Nice shots Peter... As always, I really wish we'd come along... It sure beats packing boxes :-S

All 3 shots are "neat & in the middle"

#1 is good and would look great in a tourist brochure... It would have been a heap better IMHO if the rocks had been sharp too... I'm surprised that you only had F8 at 1/160th in that light...

#2 - good timing...

#3 - I understand what you were going for, but I'm afraid nothing grabs me in this image... It might have been more grabbing if the dark patch had been off to the left a bit...

Hi Peter,

It would have been a great day at Boat Harbour. That first pic could easily be out of a Port Stephens tourist magazine

Great capture/timing on the second shot.

Sorry I didn't make it, too many things to catch up around the house.

Not sure about third one

Cheers,

Radar

It was beautiful weather yesterday and today up here!
Love the beach and water!
A lot better spot than I found somewhere in Sydney!

Peter - for some strange reason I like shot 3. It reminds me of rock ectoplasm

Thanks one and all for your feedback which is much appreciated.

Wayne - You're right - #2 needed a little more work. The girls were quite dark, plus they have naturally dark skin compared to whities like me (one is birddog's daughter and the other a friend from Mozambique) so I played a fair bit with the colour balance and it's skewed the colour. Plus I did a bit of (unsuccessful) dodging to try and bring out the detail. I went back and redid this one, the newer version now appears above.

Matt - I don't take this as patronising. I've learnt a lot from being here and have a better feel for framing and for the technical aspects. I'm now approaching the stage where I adjust aperture and exposure and framing and such as a subconscious rather than a conscious act and I think this is starting to show. Plus I've become quite profficient in the PP area which helps too. One other thing I've learnt is to post less images and pick only the cream of the crop. This probably makes me look better than I really am because you get to see less of my duds (I took 562 pics over the weekend and will probably post about 10 of them at most)

Frank - I had real issues cropping the first shot. I was unhappy with the softness and blown highlights in the rocks, yet the whole image lost it's impact when I cropped them out (looked like it was shot in a swimming pool) so I decided to live with it.

John - re: F8 at 1/160 - I shoot in aperture priority so chose F8 since I've found that close to the sweet spot for the lens. The metering chose the shutter speed, but I was using a CP to cut the glare and the light levels.

John, Chris & others Re: #3 - I think this is one of those love/hate images because it is abstract enough to require an imposed interpretation rather than having a narrative. The assessment of the image will flow from that interpretation and I'd expect this will polarise the viewer's appreciation of it. (gee I sound like Wendell )

Stubbsy No 1 is a corker and don't let them tell you different. Chicks sells and thats it. No more said
J

A very good group of images........ your work has improved........

jethro wrote:Stubbsy No 1 is a corker and don't let them tell you different. Chicks sells and thats it. No more said
J

Agreed!! #1 is the pick of the bunch, very nice!
#2 shows good timing
#3 doesn't quiet work, this kind of shot is familar to me, my wife is always asking why i have shots of bits of trees and rocks, I'm trying to bring out the detail in nature as I think you tried to here.

Yes, picture #1 feels great and succeeds in conveying emotion (back to the beach!). Did the scene looks like this or did you push the saturation a bit in PS?

Link.

stubbsy wrote:re: F8 at 1/160 - I shoot in aperture priority so chose F8 since I've found that close to the sweet spot for the lens. The metering chose the shutter speed, but I was using a CP to cut the glare and the light levels.

OK... understood... I shoot in A mode most of the time as well, but I vary the aperture according to the type of look I'm going for... Personally, I feel that #2 would look quite a lot better if you'd chosen a narrower aperture to get the rocks in focus as well... Either that - or choose the point of focus further out, in which case you may have achieved the same effect at f8...

Link wrote:Yes, picture #1 feels great and succeeds in conveying emotion (back to the beach!). Did the scene looks like this or did you push the saturation a bit in PS?

Link.

I pushed the saturation a bit, but the water is very shallow at this beach and the CP brought up the blue so I had much of this in camera.

leek wrote:

stubbsy wrote:re: F8 at 1/160 - I shoot in aperture priority so chose F8 since I've found that close to the sweet spot for the lens. The metering chose the shutter speed, but I was using a CP to cut the glare and the light levels.

OK... understood... I shoot in A mode most of the time as well, but I vary the aperture according to the type of look I'm going for... Personally, I feel that #2 would look quite a lot better if you'd chosen a narrower aperture to get the rocks in focus as well... Either that - or choose the point of focus further out, in which case you may have achieved the same effect at f8...

Thanks for the tips John. I'll have to try this for the future, although, to be honest, I didn't even think of getting the rocks in focus. I was framing a tight shot of the girls, but since I keep my other eye open, I could see the wave about to break, zoomed wide and clicked!

... No... I meant image #1... the rocks are sharper in #2