U.S. Open Surfing Picture

[photobum]

I took this picture from the pier at the U.S. Open Of Surfing. I cropped the image a little, but I couldn't crop out the surfer paddling the the background. Maybe that could add a little more of a competition feel to the image anyway? I also sharpened the image slightly and adjusted the saturation, etc. in iPhoto. I haven't gotten too deep into the PP portion of photography yet.

I would like a general critique of the image...how the image appears overall. Is it sharp enough? Is the composition good? Are the colors good? Any advice at all will be helpful. I just got the Canon 70-200 f/2.8 non IS lens that I used for this image and am wondering how good of a job I'm doing with it.

Quite a few of the other images taken this day were slightly blurry. Does that mean I am cropping too much? Too much camera movement ( I used a monopod for these pictures)?

Canon T1i
Canon 70-200 f/2.8 non-IS
Monopod
ISO 200
f/7.1
1/1000
AWB

Thank you for any advice you can offer.

[cyber3d]

Personally I like the shot. I did download and tried a quickie PSD "heal brush" on the background surfer and it worked beautifully and easily. IMO it helped improve the image.

I also tried to blur the entire back plane - but could not do it easily.

I like the comp, the movement, the color. I tried a little PSD HDR using default with local adaptation and it was spectacular.

[photobum]

Can you post your result so that I can see it compared to the original? So image quality on the original looks good to you and sharp enough?

[cyber3d]

Sure. Be sure to click through to large format in Flickr.

See if you like it. Remember this is a quick 5 minute edit. So its not perfect.

[photobum]

The image does look better with the surfer in the background edited out. The colors seem to look a little better too, and it seems to make the picture look sharper. I don't think that I can do that in iPhoto...that probably means that I will have to invest in a better post production program at some point! Thanks for the help and advice with the image.

[cyber3d]

Oh man. you got to get PSD. At least try out the trial edition, or the student edition of Photoshop CS5. Goto Adobe. I've tried to give iPhoto the benefit of doubt but it just don't cut it for digital photography.

[rotty022]

i agree that the image is better without the other surfer.

[DrTasso]

I think it's a great picture, surfing is really hard to shoot I'd imagine. I do agree it looks better without the other surfer.