New Photographer

This is shot with a Sony a77m2 that has been smarter than me for two and a half years. I am finally getting it straight.
I just completed my first college term in my quest for an AAS in Professional Photography. This is the only photography training I have had. I shoot a Sony A77m2. During a night shoot at the local skate park I saw an ocean with frozen waves. I love the idea, but want to know if this image depicts that and if I should crop out the bench at the top. I have pretty thick skin, so please tell me what I could improve on to get the effect I am looking for. One instructor is a lighting guru and this did not catch her eye. I want to know why but it is too late to ask her as she is gone for the summer so I am asking you. The other instructor is from the art side and loves it. I have posted the photo as shot through a tungsten filter.


ISO 1000 f/1.7 1/250 sec

[IMG]Skatesurf by settaroo, on Flickr[/IMG]

Edited by retta - 09 May 2017 at 15:18

Hi retta, welcome to Dyxum.

To show a picture here you first of all need to link the actual picture file (the one ending on .jpg), secondly Google is especially hard since you have to do a few things extra, as you can read here.

You can deal with that or use something like photobucket, which is also free and gives you the BBcode imagelink without any additional hassle.

Good luck, looking forward to seeing your pictures here.

Glad you made it work

My main concern would be the dark step at the left top, I find that very distracting in the picture and I would have aimed lower to avoid it or just crop it off.

Once you've done that I think there is a nice line/flow in the picture, allthough it's still kind of flat/boring. Maybe adding contrast and/or cropping also from the bottom will get more emphasis on the waves and lines and thereby improve the image.

Welcome to Dyxum, Retta. I agree with Pieter/pegelli on all points. With flatness he means the colors/light. You could enhance the curvatures with adding light from around the corner. Not too much.

With flatness I indeed mean flat lighting/colour. Without adding light but just by working a bit on the file you can already overcome some of that:



I cropped this to the essentials of the picture (swirling line inbetween the bumps/waves. Secondly I played a bit in photoshop with contrast, lightness, levels and curves to bring out some more structure and texture. With different (targetted) lighting you could achieve better results, but even with this file there is a lot more in there then you would think at first sight.

Yes. The blasting lights make it flat. :-) I REALLY wanted to pass it off as a Siskind emulation, LOL. I am going to try your idea in a daylight reshoot. If I go in the morning, I will be able to shoot without people in hte shot. I have some fun ones with people and I need to reshoot them as well.

Thank you! I can see what you mean about light placement. Next term we are getting into advanced lighting and I will be able to tell what is too much without the experimentation it would take now.