The weather in Vancouver continues to be miserable, so to remind myself of warmer and sunnier times, I went back and processed a photo from my road trip in the US this summer.
This is Hole in the Wall beach, aptly named as it can only be accessed through a hole in the wall from Panther Beach that is only uncovered at low tide. Photographers must be careful not to get stuck on the wrong side!
Located along a relatively quiet section of the Pacific Coast Highway, these are generally considered to be little-known beaches, and are minimally signposted with parking along a rutted track, and access to Panther Beach down a steep, narrow path. Imagine my surprise when I found the parking lot, and beach, packed!
I'm a British software developer and photographer living in Vancouver, BC. I mainly photograph landscapes, cityscapes, night scenes, and water.
If you're interested in any...
Great beach. I wonder if you would care to share what you processed and how? I would have thought from the exif that the original might have been underexposed.
Thanks for your comment and for following me. Glad you enjoyed my photos of the English Peak District. Your shots look fantastic - I'm only a beginner on manual settings and mostly take the lazy auto option but you clearly know what you're doing, I'm sure I'll learn a thing or two following you and I'll get to see sights around Vancouver too!
I've embedded the histogram at the bottom right -- as you can see, this shot pretty much fit well into the dynamic range of the camera. There's some slight loss of shadow detail in the dark rocks, but nothing excessive.
Usually, especially with my 50D which was a rather noisy camera, I use the technique of exposing to the right (ETTR) to maximise the data available in post-processing, so my aim is to get the histogram looking like that -- with data all the way to the right hand edge, but without overexposing. I do this by using the camera's built-in histogram viewer, as well as the flashing overexposure warning when viewing an image. I'll then either use exposure compensation, or switch into fully manual mode, to tweak this.
Having taken the image, I then bring it into Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw plugin, which handles the conversion from the RAW file. This is exactly the same software as is built into Lightroom. The first step was to remove the nasty dust/oil spots visible in the sky. After that I applied geometric and chromatic aberration correction, and cropped the image slightly at the top and bottom to make (in my eye) a more pleasing composition.
A small white balance tweak gave the image a warmer tone which I preferred. The sky was quite uneven in the original shot -- this wasn't due to using a polariser, which can have this effect on a wide-angle lens, but due to the clouds on the left hand side. I applied an ND grad filter diagonally down from the right to even out the sky exposure. In cases where the graduated filter is required for aesthetic reasons, rather than to reduce the dynamic range of a scene into what the camera can see, I much prefer applying them in post-processing -- a slightly mis-positioned physical ND filter can create an unevenness which is very hard to eliminate.
After that it was just a case of doing small adjustments, primarily with the curves tool in ACR, to bring the image where I wanted it. I darkened the shadows while leaving the blacks, which gave the rocks more contrast without losing any more detail in the really dark parts. I also dropped the highlights a little bit, which brought more colour into the sky and more detail into the water, while boosting the whites to make the brightest parts of the froth really pop. I also dialed in a little vibrance to make the sky and sand pop, and a little clarity (which is what Adobe call their microcontrast adjustment) to bring out more detail in the frothy water.
Finally, I imported the image into Photoshop itself, where I used the spot healing tool to remove a slightly sea-monsterish object floating in the distance on the far right of the image (although it was probably a gull), and also to apply a slight amount of vignetting from the bottom of the image up -- I could have also done this with another ND grad filter in ACR.
I probably spent about 5-10 minutes on the shot in total, which is less than on many photos I take, and the majority of the adjustments were done in Adobe Camera Raw. As you can see, the difference from the shot straight out of camera is subtle, but, in my opinion at least, better!
I appreciate that was a lot to take in -- let me know if you have any questions!
@humphreyhippo I don't think I did on this occasion! I remember the tripod legs sank into the sand and got quite wet, but I think I managed to keep my feet dry -- unusual for me, I know!
@roachling I lived in Monyash between the ages of 11 and 18 and went to school in Bakewell, so I'm very familiar with the areas you are photographing -- it's great to see them! Keep it up!
@abirkill If you have any tips for getting sand out of a tripod, fell free to let @haytor know. Not that he dropped mine at Bournemouth or anything... ;)
@humphreyhippo Oh dear! I think my tripod doesn't have the required build tolerances for sand to become an issue! All it does is cause some nice crunching noises when I retract the legs, and a little bit of scoring of the paint (what little is left!)
http://www.snoopy.me.uk/misc/_MG_8936_unprocessed.jpg
I've embedded the histogram at the bottom right -- as you can see, this shot pretty much fit well into the dynamic range of the camera. There's some slight loss of shadow detail in the dark rocks, but nothing excessive.
Usually, especially with my 50D which was a rather noisy camera, I use the technique of exposing to the right (ETTR) to maximise the data available in post-processing, so my aim is to get the histogram looking like that -- with data all the way to the right hand edge, but without overexposing. I do this by using the camera's built-in histogram viewer, as well as the flashing overexposure warning when viewing an image. I'll then either use exposure compensation, or switch into fully manual mode, to tweak this.
Having taken the image, I then bring it into Photoshop's Adobe Camera Raw plugin, which handles the conversion from the RAW file. This is exactly the same software as is built into Lightroom. The first step was to remove the nasty dust/oil spots visible in the sky. After that I applied geometric and chromatic aberration correction, and cropped the image slightly at the top and bottom to make (in my eye) a more pleasing composition.
A small white balance tweak gave the image a warmer tone which I preferred. The sky was quite uneven in the original shot -- this wasn't due to using a polariser, which can have this effect on a wide-angle lens, but due to the clouds on the left hand side. I applied an ND grad filter diagonally down from the right to even out the sky exposure. In cases where the graduated filter is required for aesthetic reasons, rather than to reduce the dynamic range of a scene into what the camera can see, I much prefer applying them in post-processing -- a slightly mis-positioned physical ND filter can create an unevenness which is very hard to eliminate.
After that it was just a case of doing small adjustments, primarily with the curves tool in ACR, to bring the image where I wanted it. I darkened the shadows while leaving the blacks, which gave the rocks more contrast without losing any more detail in the really dark parts. I also dropped the highlights a little bit, which brought more colour into the sky and more detail into the water, while boosting the whites to make the brightest parts of the froth really pop. I also dialed in a little vibrance to make the sky and sand pop, and a little clarity (which is what Adobe call their microcontrast adjustment) to bring out more detail in the frothy water.
Finally, I imported the image into Photoshop itself, where I used the spot healing tool to remove a slightly sea-monsterish object floating in the distance on the far right of the image (although it was probably a gull), and also to apply a slight amount of vignetting from the bottom of the image up -- I could have also done this with another ND grad filter in ACR.
I probably spent about 5-10 minutes on the shot in total, which is less than on many photos I take, and the majority of the adjustments were done in Adobe Camera Raw. As you can see, the difference from the shot straight out of camera is subtle, but, in my opinion at least, better!
I appreciate that was a lot to take in -- let me know if you have any questions!
@roachling I lived in Monyash between the ages of 11 and 18 and went to school in Bakewell, so I'm very familiar with the areas you are photographing -- it's great to see them! Keep it up!