Horizon on my landscape, please critique.

[Rehesan]

Hi all,

I went yesterday to Laguna Beach for a walk on the beach and obviously I had my camera with me. I made this photo but I need your critiques-advices on this questions I have:

1. How can I make the horizon to be an horizontal line?. The boats are kind of lined up horizontally, but the horizon not, the sea looks like going out of the frame to the left.

2. Regarding compositon: does the sea and sky can be considered as negative space on my photo?.

Thanks for your comments.



EXIF:

Nikon D3000
AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 G lens
Exposure program: auto no-flash.
f/5.6
1/1250s
300mm
No flash

[amber1972]

I am very new at this but only have one thing to say. I like the shot, but the horizon is so crooked. I would try to streighten it up some. I can barely even look at the picture pecause it is so crooked.

[NathanCH]

Do you use photoshop? If so, straighten the horizon and try to bring out some of those colours in the sky. It will help a lot!

With a tiny bit of work you could have a really great shot! The small boat next to the large one is just perfect.

[EasternSierra]

You basically have a decent shot. It's a good exposure, so with some straightening and basic processing, it could be decent. I'd be happy to give it a shot, with your permission...

Whatever editing program you use *should* have a straightening or leveling tool. It * should* just be a matter of lining up 2 points that are supposed to be paralell. The program will usually rotate and crop it automatically.

If the program you use doesn't have a specific tool for leveling, you can free rotate. I would say about 7* to the right would be a good place to start...

The next thing you're going to want to do is clean the dust spot right next to the horizon in the middle. Again, there should be a tool in your editing program for removing blemishes or a clone tool that will fix that right up.

After you have it cleaned up, you might want to re-post it. It's tough to make cropping recommendations when we don't know what you'll be left with after straightening...

[edbayani]

if you're using photoshop, you can click on the eyedropper tool and another box will appear with the measure tool (ruler icon) click it and click on one end of the horizon and drag it to the other end and click and release. go to image and choose rotate canvas and another box will appear and choose arbitrary, you can see how many degrees your photograph is off. click ok and it will automatically level it, but since the photo was rotated, there will be vacant areas on the sides, you can either crop it to remove the blank areas but the photo will be smaller.
if you don't want to crop it you can extend the image areas to fill the vacant spaces by using the clone tool or use the marquee (rectangular tool) and feather it about 2 pixels and select the area near one side, then press ctrl and Alt (command/option for macs} and 2 arrows black and white will appear meaning it will cut and copy the selection and with the ctrl/alt pressed, press still the shift to keep it aligned, when you move your mouse to the vacant area to fill it.
i hope this can help you.

[Rehesan]

Originally Posted by amber1972

I am very new at this but only have one thing to say. I like the shot, but the horizon is so crooked. I would try to streighten it up some. I can barely even look at the picture pecause it is so crooked.

Yes, the horizon is too crooked that I get the feeling the ocean will drown away on the left side ot the image, he he.

I´ve having a hard time trying to straight the horizon in some of my shots, I tried to rotate the camera clockwise a little bit but never could get a good straight horizon.

Thanks for your comment.

Originally Posted by NathanCH

Do you use photoshop? If so, straighten the horizon and try to bring out some of those colours in the sky. It will help a lot!

With a tiny bit of work you could have a really great shot! The small boat next to the large one is just perfect.

Yes, I use photoshop. I have the CS2 release but I am not so proeficency with the software, in fact I only use it to make some basic adjustments: levels, contrast, color and watermarks.

I will look for the process options you mention and try to do those adjustments.

Thanks a lot!

Originally Posted by EasternSierra

You basically have a decent shot. It's a good exposure, so with some straightening and basic processing, it could be decent. I'd be happy to give it a shot, with your permission...

Whatever editing program you use *should* have a straightening or leveling tool. It * should* just be a matter of lining up 2 points that are supposed to be paralell. The program will usually rotate and crop it automatically.

If the program you use doesn't have a specific tool for leveling, you can free rotate. I would say about 7* to the right would be a good place to start...

The next thing you're going to want to do is clean the dust spot right next to the horizon in the middle. Again, there should be a tool in your editing program for removing blemishes or a clone tool that will fix that right up.

After you have it cleaned up, you might want to re-post it. It's tough to make cropping recommendations when we don't know what you'll be left with after straightening...

Thank you so much for your advice and input, it´s been very illustrating.

Please feel free to do the proccesing for the image, on my side I will look for those processing options in the CS2.

Thank you again.

[EasternSierra]

Fair warning, processing on the full size, high resolution image will produice much nicer results...



I straightened the horizon, and used a blemish remover to pull out the dust spot. Than I bumped contrast and saturation just a bit, and used the burn tool to darken the sky just a touch.

That's it...

[Rehesan]

Originally Posted by EasternSierra

Fair warning, processing on the full size, high resolution image will produice much nicer results...



I straightened the horizon, and used a blemish remover to pull out the dust spot. Than I bumped contrast and saturation just a bit, and used the burn tool to darken the sky just a touch.

That's it...

Thank you soooo much!!!! This looks really good. I will keep on learning photoshop.

Man, you did a great job with the photo.

Thank you.

[dishingthedivine]

agreed that photo looks great! I can understand the initial concern about straightening the horizon (would the boats then look crooked?) but it came out just perfect!

[Rehesan]

Thanks again for all your helpful comments. I really learnt a lot from you kindly input and put it in practice, and here is the result:



What do you think?