Shrimp Boat on Shem Creek

[Mark Engelhart]

I recently shot this image. There is some post work done on it, like removing some people from the boat and the sky ended up blown out. I am looking for suggestions either in shooting or post work that would improve this work.

Thanks,

[dlambert]

If you've got EXIF info for this photo, that'll encourage more responses in the critiques sections.

You already noticed the blown-out sky; this might be something you could improve in post. I like the pelican on the piling to the right of the boat, but the additional pilings & birds in the background don't add as much to the photo, IMO. It might not hurt to check the horizon to make sure it's level. To me, it looks like it's leaning slightly down on the left.

[RichardTaylor]

+1 dlambert's post especially the cropping suggestion.

When shooting maybe bracket your exposure (under exposing the sky) so it is not all washed out. (There is a band of clouds across the whole scene (around flag high)). Then when PPing process the sky seperately to get the most out of it, and merge the sky into the main scene.

I do like your your photo of this very nice scene.

[Krusty79]

Adding to dlambert's suggestion on cropping, I would suggest cropping out/recomposing so that you cannot see any of the pilings to the right of the main one with the pelican. To fix the blown out sky, you'll have to either use a graduated neutral density filter, shoot in the golden hours and/or use exposure blending or HDR. That's a nice shot, though, and I like the pelican in the foreground.