Second Beach sunset reflection

[LaurenceNorton]

Hi everyone.

This is my first post in the forum, and I'm continuing to work on developing my photography and looking for honest constructive criticism & comments from the forum.

This was shot just at sunset at Second Beach (just south of La Push, Washington).  This is a 30 second exposure, shot with Nikon D3x, Nikkor 24 PC-E, CPL & ND & Solid filters.

[Ifocus4u]

Very nice shot and the colours are wonderful.  My only suggestion would be to crop it just above the red spot on the lower rock.  It would give you a more solid foreground and the eye will follow the pointing rock back into the shot.  Very nice and I look forward to seeing more!

[francois]

Welcome on the forum!
Very nice image although I find the bottom rocks a bit squeezed in the frame.

[NationalTrussed]

Ask and the replies may come from any source, may not be useful and may guide you in a wrong direction.
It's your picture so like it, I do.
Composition/cropping is determined through the screen/viewfinder when taking the picture so don't change it now, it's unnecessary, if you are unhappy best to dump the pic and take another.
I like the from here at my feet to the far distant horizon in this pic, its lovely.
With a time exposure the stationary elements should be absolutely crystal clear so to enhance the viscous smear of the moving element.
The size and repro of this pic is not big enough to determin if this is so in this case.

[neile]

Laurence,

Welcome to the forum! Second Beach is a lovely location to shoot with a ton of options. With regard to your image, I like how you are playing with objects in the foreground leading to background items of interest. If you are ever back at Second Beach I'd suggest trying this reframed a couple of steps to the right, so the larger rocks on the left edge of the image aren't there. Then you can focus just on the foreground right rock leading out to the island in the distance.

Another thing to try (although it requires a stronger ND filter) is to run an even longer exposure, to see changes in the patterns of the wave. At 4-6 minutes you'll get very interesting effects around the rock that can be quite entertaining.

With regards to NationalTrussed's comments on cropping, it's a huge religious debate, but I have to disagree If I only cropped to what the viewfinder sees, none of the images in my Washington Coast gallery would be possible (they were all cropped, some extensively, after shooting).