A fairly complex project, this. The dawn was not that colorful, although the luminosity was there. Allt he colors were present (nothing is completely artificial) but they were very subdued. The image was split into sky and foreground with selections, and each was worked on separately.
First I used a touch of Neat Image to smooth it out a bit, there was a little bit of noise.
Next I loaded the sky selectiona nd worked with levels and selective color to enhance the color that was already there, to clarify and intensify it. Then I laid down a gradient mask-to-transparency on the top 1/3 of the sky and faded it to bring a little more density to the very top.
Moving on to the foreground, I used similar steps to work on that, but no need for a gradient. Particular care was made in usiong selective color to bring the water (which was more blue/cyan in the original) into a better (but still subdued) reflection of the enhanced sky colors. History brush was used in lower left foreground to clean that area up a bit after all this.
Finally I used a home-brew version of gothic glow (alternating gaussian blur, sharpening, hue/saturation and high pass) to give the image more clarity and pop.
In the original the horizon has some barely discernible (3 pixels high at this size), jagged bluffs making a dark line across the entire horizon; this line looked like a bad burn overlap, so I cloned it out. There was a very tiny gull silhouetted above the fisherman and I cloned that out also, it was looking more like a dust speck than a bird.
Resize, final sharpening, borders and save to web.
Statistics
Place: 18 out of 248 Avg (all users): 6.7106 Avg (commenters): 7.8824 Avg (participants): 6.4870 Avg (non-participants): 6.9250 Views since voting: 2841 Views during voting: 320 Votes: 235 Comments: 27 Favorites: 7 (view)
Excellent shot, bear. I gave it a 7. If I wasn't too busy goofing off to leave a comment, it would've been to crop the top a little bit to remove that sliver of bright sky.
Finished about where it should have, IMO. Lotta fine shots in this challenge. I predicted my second or third best score ever and an out-of-top-10 finish, and I was right about that :-)
Hey Rob' I never had chance to vote this challenge but if I had ,this is placed 5 steps higher with me, how do you figure this set of critiques at DPC.
Congratulations.
Simpe and effective compsition. Great Shot. Love the colours of the sky and reflection in the water. Hope to see this in the top 20. Well done and Good Luck.
Beautifully colours though the strange texture in the water nearer the horizon is somewhat strange. Like the way you have blue, orange, blue, orange from top to bottom. Good composition. Not sure what the red-orange blob is towards the end of the peninsula on which the fisherman is standing? Although the white at top right is interesting I do think it unbalances overall composition a bit. Nice image though!
I'm not sure if it would have been possible... depending on limits of your camera (dslr/p&s and megs) but I think this photo could have been just as effective with the colors and background, and more effective with your silhouette if you had zoomed in some (or cropped)Pretty though.
nice mood and sentiment. I like the composition and angling, particularly that the waterline is higher than the head of the figure. The image might be more dramatic with a horizontal, rather than vertical crop, imho.
Beautiful colors and great silhouette! A bit tighter zoom on the subject would be interesting to see as well, but I really like the composition of this photo the way it is.
This is an incredible photo! I love the minimalistic feel to the silhouette. It's just the perfect enhancement to that aMAZING sunset and ocean. This would get a 20 from me if we had it :)
My only question is: 1/ how would this have worked if the fisherman had been used to connect the sea with the sky? I'm not fond of this border. Otherwise, a lovely image. 8
What an incredibly sharp horizon! the colors are beautiful. Maybe it would look better with a tighter crop at the top, but then you would lose the cool white bit... Only other (slight) problem is the lack of details in the sea, is it too much neatimage? Still an 8
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