An Angry Sea by kannafoot

An Angry Sea

I went to Newport this morning for the annual Chowder Cook Off at the Newport Waterfront. The food was good, but the weather was horrendous. It was pouring when I left my house, and it rained most of the time we were there. It was also quite windy, although that is not uncommon in Newport. After leaving the Chowder event, I decided to drive down to Bretton Point, the southern-most tip of Newport, on the assumption that there would be some dynamic ocean shots available. I was not disappointed. While the surf was not crashing like I had hoped, it was certainly churning well out into the distance. The challenge was to capture the mood of the day and the sea. To do that justice, I opted for a black and white conversion, but also chose to go extremely high contrast with the final product. The dark rocks that line the shore provided a perfect opportunity to set the extremes of black and white.

Post processing was all in PSE today. I started with a duplicate of the background layer, and desaturated it. (Desaturating the layer simply means instructing PSE to convert it to a greyscale image.) To produce the extreme contrast effect, I added a black and white gradient map in soft light blend mode. The initial effect was too harsh, though, so I lowered the opacity to 73%. A levels adjustment was added to balance the scene and I followed that with a brightness and contrast adjustment. The top layer as usual was a sepia photo filter.
Oh wow this is excellent! Love the stormy feel the black and white creates :')
June 2nd, 2012  
Beautiful sea shot! Fav
June 2nd, 2012  
@tabithasyear Thanks, Tabitha! It certainly felt stormy out there today. I'm glad the photo was able to capture the mood.
@pjonas Thanks for the Fav, Patty!
June 3rd, 2012  
Beautiful shot. You've certainly captured Mother Nature putting on a good display!
June 3rd, 2012  
Love the contrast in this image!
June 3rd, 2012  
awesome b&w! FAV
June 3rd, 2012  
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