Wild weather

[bigbob]

Looking at this gives me nightmares , i hated the central composition of the two people , but without them being central i could'nt get the full sweep of breaking waves in .
I did an alternative shot with them in the more pleasing left hand side , but lost a lot of the action .
How would any of you compose/crop this shot , remembering that i could'nt move much to the right .
Taken back in Oct on one of the windiest days of the year , the highest tide and with a few tankers passing made the swell even higher .
St Margerets Bay , nr Dover , Kent .

B..

[Autumn]

Re: Wild weather

Looking at this gives me nightmares , i hated the central composition of the two people , but without them being central i could'nt get the full sweep of breaking waves in .
I did an alternative shot with them in the more pleasing left hand side , but lost a lot of the action .
How would any of you compose/crop this shot , remembering that i could'nt move much to the right .
Taken back in Oct on one of the windiest days of the year , the highest tide and with a few tankers passing made the swell even higher .
St Margerets Bay , nr Dover , Kent .

B..

You could always do a bit of post processing Bob and move the seat and shadows to the left. There would only be a bit of railing, concrete and foamy sea to fill in.

Lovely image of a wild sea BTW.

[Stephen]

Re: Wild weather

Looking at this gives me nightmares , i hated the central composition of the two people , but without them being central i could'nt get the full sweep of breaking waves in .
I did an alternative shot with them in the more pleasing left hand side , but lost a lot of the action .
How would any of you compose/crop this shot , remembering that i could'nt move much to the right .
Taken back in Oct on one of the windiest days of the year , the highest tide and with a few tankers passing made the swell even higher .
St Margerets Bay , nr Dover , Kent .

B..

I see your problem B.. I'm with you on the position of the couple. All I can think of is that you need to make the angle between you and the couple more acute. this would mean moving nearer the rail and looking more down the the promenade with the camera. This would surely put the seat and couple more to the left, yet still give you the drama of the waves, maybe even more so. Of course whether you want the salt spray over your camera is a different issue

[bigbob]

Re: Wild weather

Thanks Autumn had'nt given a cut and paste a thought , not sure if i would want to do that .
Stephen it was 'nt the spray that made me stay where i was , but a large fence the only other position would have been on the walkway its self , that would have put the couple sideways on , there is an alternative shot in galley (it is another shot , not a crop) but that loses a lot of spray .
Need to save up for a 10-20mm .
Thanks for both the comments .

B..

[Archangel]

Re: Wild weather

Looking at this gives me nightmares , i hated the central composition of the two people , but without them being central i could'nt get the full sweep of breaking waves in .
I did an alternative shot with them in the more pleasing left hand side , but lost a lot of the action .
How would any of you compose/crop this shot , remembering that i could'nt move much to the right .
Taken back in Oct on one of the windiest days of the year , the highest tide and with a few tankers passing made the swell even higher .
St Margerets Bay , nr Dover , Kent .

B..

Hi Bob,

This was one of my favorite shots which I gave a very high rating (but I think it was a slight different one).

This is what I would personally do, given the restriction of moving to the right.

I would move the camera slightly to the right to the point that the waves start reaching the top of the frame (around 1/10 of this specific frame). This way the fence with the couple would be slightly off the from middle of the photo and they would look like they are behind a fence of water and then move the camera upwards (around 1/5 of the total frame height) no to have so much ground visible, but instead capture more of the height of the water and more of the apex of the water making the scene look more dramatic, more aggressive.

Then I would press the click button

But it is still a great shot as it is. And since we are speaking of this specific shot my high rating went not so much for the scenery, but forthe idea.
I thought exactly like this (I hope I was not mistaken). I thought that you saw somehow the entire scenery which was not probably so much exciting of just two people sitting on the bench. You got the idea of how this scenery could look nice and just waited there for the right "wave" moment to click the button.


Regards

George

[Tom]

Re: Wild weather

It's a great image anyway.
This would probably be the thing not to do, but I wonder how it would have looked had you done it; and that is move to your left, directly behind the couple and have them viewing the wave full on. You may have had to move back a bit also but you would also have been able to have them off center.
Would this idea lose the impact of the wave?

[bigbob]

Re: Wild weather

Thanks George and Tom .
George you're right in the fact that i could'nt move to the right much , trouble i had as well was trying to remain anonymous , i did'nt want that couple to think i was stalking them so getting in their eyeline was the last thing i wanted .
Same reason i did'nt go straight behind them Tom .
It is a different shot in my gallery George slightly to the right but also cropped .
It's more pleasing compositionaly but loses a lot of the spray .

B..