I do love this image, but didn’t really think anyone else really would even look twice at it. Too my surprise it is actually one of the most liked photos I have ever pasted on Facebook. For me it is all about getting the feel of the classic Japanese wave painting, capturing the energy while at the same time the glassy clarity of the water.
Of course, as usual for me, I did not set out to get this image but rather I was hoping to practice some bird in flight photos. As can be predicted, for the first time in living memory there was hardly a seagull to be seen in the cove. So sitting myself on a rock near the headland I decided to take some detail photos of the wave breaking on the rocks using the long (and heavy) lens I happened to be toting around.
As you can probably guess the initial image was not quite so dramatic, but one of the real skills in photography is to recognise the potential and to try and optimise it.
One of the most important things in capturing this kind of image is trying to find locations where you can look along the length of the wave.
As can be seen in the original above even with a 400mm tele there is a lot else happening with the image, but even as I pressed the shutter I new I had what I wanted with this image (There of course were around 20 other attempts, some of which are nearly as good, but lets ignore them).
Once back at the computer it was time to make some editing decisions. For this image it really was about the crop as not much was needed in post process. I actually love all the things going on around the outskirts of the image, but they don’t really focus the attention on incredible detail of the glassy section of the wave as it rolls over. I decided that a square crop would really work well here as it seems to align better with the kind of abstract image I was after. In the end I cropped in even tighter than I was going to originally, probably only using 20% of the original image.
Post was pretty straight forward, add some contrast and clarity, pull back the highlights a touch and then a very soft vignette to focus the image and it was all done.
The moral, not much of one really but essentially I suppose no time with a camera is really ever wasted, there is always something to shoot that can make an image. Now to look for some more birds.