Sunrise over South Beach

[Tammster]

I am considering entering one of these photos in the local newspaper's annual nature photography contest.

I want to make sure that the photos don't look too edited; they are allowed to be digitally edited but clearly I don't want it to be obvious.

I personally prefer the bluish/purple one but I'm not 100% thrilled with it. Some of the things I"m wondering about are 1) is the water too dark & 2) should I have more contrast (or less?)

From Public

From Public

In case it's not obvious, I've only had an slr (Canon xsi) for about 4 months so I'm still learning. In addition, these were my very first ocean sunrise pictures.

[ebeard2802]

Both beautiful pictures! Personally, I like the first for the colors, but the bird seems a little less noticable in that one. The bird is more visible in the second, but the colors aren't as vivid. The more I think about it, I think the bird is a little distracting (probably just my own opinion) and I wonder if you could clone it out of the picture. I think it would look better that way.

Overall, beautiful pictures, but I'd pick the first.

[KajeYomama]

I think that its needs to be toned down just a little bit. The colour of the water in the first one is purpleish pink. I personally like the contrast in the first one though. Did you use a solid colour overlay? or hue/saturation adjustment? You can try doing a gradient overlay making the water less opaque thus giving it mroe of a natural colour and feel. (then warm up the colours as you go up. I like the sky, i think its still a tad much though.

[i_am_beam]

I think the second one looks a little more real. The purple one could be cool if was toned down a little. What did the photo look like originally?

[pfgroa]

I really love the colors on the first. But the water looks too colored.

Maybe you could give the clouds and rays near the sun some orange colors to make it look more natural, and then color the water the more orange color.

You could use tones similar to the colors in this photo ...which is NOT MINE lol



good luck on the contest

[Tammster]

Wow, pfgroa, the orange color in that photo looks great!