Taken at Blouberg strand, Cape town. Any suggestions for improval?

[Lujean Burger]

klip1.JPG by Lujean Burger on Light Stalking

[Erik Fransman]

@lujean-burger .
I like the composition. No rule of thirds needed here. Unfortunately, the size and resolution is to small to give any funded suggestions.

From what I can see here, the highlights are totally blown out and the blacks too dark.
I would definitely try to get some details back in the highlights. Now it’s just a white gap.

I am not sue the heavy vignette adds to this picture.

[Gordon James]

I think the answer to your question, Lujean, depends on what you were trying to achieve. If you were attempting a traditional landscape/sunset then sorry, I don’t think this is capable of achieving that. It has way too many problems, some if not all in post-processing, and my advice would be simply bin it and start again another day.

If, on the other hand, you are trying to achieve a surreal image then I think you have got some interesting ideas! The sky is pretty weird and the rocks suitably menacing. You still have the problem of the large, blown-out area of white right in the centre of the image, however, and if you can’t recover some detail and colour into that then I’m afraid it is still going to end up as a ‘development image’!

So over to you – how did you achieve this image and what were you looking to produce?

[Arthur]

If you were going for the high contrast look it works. Dont like the horizon in the middle would crop out half of the sky.

[Lujean Burger]

Hi guys

Thanks for the comments.

The idea was to create an image that seemed to have been taken in the dark, and by the lighting up the rocks down the center to create the illusion of a strong “flash” on them, thus fading away into the darkness behind the flashes reach.

The sky looks mysterious and alien after some treatment in Lightroom and Nic Sofware, whic I quite like. Unfortunately the photo was a JPEG, and if a RAW file (whic I only tsarted using after it was taken) I might have been able to save the light and over exposure in the center.

Overall, I like a “weird” and different style of photo.

[Author]

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