I originally set out to catch a photo of the milky way outside of deep cove in Vancouver, unfortunately there was just too much noise and I wasn't able to do so, I ended up hearing a sea lion yelping at around 3 am, unfortunately it was to dark for me to see the animal until 5am. I managed to get close enough to shoot this with a 24mm focal length, however, there was very little light around and I couldn't raise my iso high enough without getting noise into the image. I was lucky enough to walk away with this photo. I still plan on going back to this photo in the near future as I've learned a lot more about cropping and editing photos. any feed back would greatly be appreciated.
If I were to crop, I would crop the right side a little so that the sea lion isn’t so centered. The big island in the back is also really close to the edge which makes it feel uncomfortable for a lot of folks. Dealing with that might take some practice with the clone tool though. Overall, I like the photo. The colors work well, as it’s mainly blue tones throughout.
Hey Tong, thank you for taking your time to check out my image. I will definately apply some of your edits for a different perspective for sure.
Welcome, Jaspreet. Fellow Milky Way chaser here. I commend you for getting outside to shoot.
To follow on Tong's thoughts... are you familiar with "the rule of thirds?" It's a mathematical pattern that nature reveals in many forms... it's the thing we don't always notice consciously but we know there's some reason one shot stands out over another. Easy concept to study... fun to achieve in an image.
That's a plump little Harbor Seal you caught there. Nice.
Ok... here's a sample edit. Purely to my taste, but so you can get an idea on "rule of thirds." I've placed the lower right intersection of lines over the seal's head; cropped out the rock on right... that Tong mentioned; and pushed the structure of the image 100% to bring out the texture of the ocean surface. I tweaked the color just a bit to bring out the blue hour luminance. Nothing fancy... I used a phone app called Snapseed. Not near my computer to play in Lightroom.
One last technical thought... the far island seems too high in the image, but not like you can get that hunk of rock moved. Ha! Still, I like that you got out and had some fun. Keep shooting.