This week’s photo is actually one that I offer a similar scene of for the purchasing of prints from my gallery, mostly because there is a number of people that are very attracted to coastal scenes. I honestly cannot blame them as the ocean and coastlines are usually rather beautiful locations. This week’s critique will follow the same general format as last weeks, introduce the photo, a little bit of story for it, and what worked and did not work for it. Without further ado, here is the photo.
1/50 sec at F/13, ISO 100, 57mm (NIKKOR Z 24-70mm f/2.8 S)
This shot came from a day hike as a part of my exploration of the areas along the Oregon coastline. It was a surreal location and put a fair bit of effort into trying to make this composition work while out at the cape. This including hiking around several cliffs sides to try and get different angles of the rocks here that are jutting out into the ocean. Unfortunately, while a fairly decent photo there are still some things that I did not like. In this case it mostly came down to the composition as the editing was done well on the first run at it unlike last weeks photo critique.
What bothered me most while hiking around the cliff sides and while editing the photo later was the subject of the rocks being in the shadows, which also casted a shadow across the water here. The other factor that I am not as happy with is the sharp top-down view of the rock formation. The first issue I have could be corrected with simply hiking out to the point for a sunrise setting as opposed to later in the day towards sunset. The second issue however, there is no cure for without access to a drone. The cliffsides are all rather high up around the rock formation and there is no safe path downwards. I honestly wish I could stand on the rocks down on the bottom left of the scene and capture a sunrise shot of the cliffs with a wide angle. As this is not possible, I have yet to revisit the site. It is still on my list of places to reshoot at some point but my list of new places to visit is more pressing as I think the lighting change alone would bring minimal improvements to this shot.
The version of this picture that is available for print is simply one that is captured backed out to 36mm for the focal length. This allows for a slightly better foreground leading out to the rock formation which is why I chose that picture for print opportunities. However, I have a few better coastal shots in the editing pipeline so stay tuned!