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Erick Castellon's picture

California Coast

A few years back, I headed to Big Sur of the California coast in search for some good light at sunset.

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6 Comments

I've seen this picture a few times. I actually think there is too much orange in this photo. The sea is perfect as well as the sky however I would've neutralised the orange in CC or maybe used a different time, It makes the image look rather flat with so much orange. Overall though great image, you were clearly very lucky with the weather to get such golden light! haha.

Thanks for the feedback, yes I was lucky with weather.

Scouting location for a sequel of Jurassic Park?

McWay is beautiful! I personally don't mind the orange knowing sunset there can really be intense. That said, I think the range of contrast is too crunched. The shadows to me shouldn't be as bright as they are and there should be more contrast between the spots of sun and shadows.

I'm also not entirely in love with the composition. What's your subject here? The entire scene? It's a bit busy and I completely see what you want here. You want to include enough of the tree so it doesn't look like an afterthought. You want the left side of the photo to really show off that sunset color/lighting. You want the bottom to give some perspective and ground the viewer. All of that said, it just feels like it's trying to do too much. I think you could fix this with darker shadows, especially in the foreground.

This is a really quick edit but shows my ideas. I wouldn't leave the water that dark and I'd certainly have more room to edit with the raw of course. Just wanted to be clear about what I was trying to explain!

Great suggestions, thanks for the input.

Anytime!