I won’t only show what I think are good photos here. It’s worth discussing failures as well, and it’s important to be honest. Here is such a failure.
I spent a lot of time taking photos of the sea in Northern Scotland. I had never lived near the sea and I love the water. I find that the sea is very photogenic and even a boring beach has a lot of potential. I would essentially get up every clear morning, go to the beach before work, and take some photos. I did that for several years.
In this photo, I wanted to capture the rocks as the sun light was just coming over the horizon. It was April and the days were starting to become longer (this was taken just after 6:30am).
As usual, I took a portrait oriented landscape. I put a large rock in the foreground for interest and as a starting point. I thought that the patterns in the rock were interesting enough to justify it.
I put the shore line and the horizon roughly on third lines to crete a kind of balance and scale in the scene. Classic.
Then tried to line up the rocks in the sea and balance the image. I put the rocks in the sea and those in the shore in such a way that they kind of echoed each other on each side of the mini bay. I also tried to spread the masses in the image (the clouds, the sea rocks, the shore rocks, and the rock in the foreground) so that they look evenly distributed.
Finally, I added an ND grad for the sky that was getting bright, especially compared to the beach that was in full shade. The darkness allowed me to slow down the lens and get a milky sea. As a result, the colours were interesting and the whole frame had shades of pastels that I found pleasant.
But sometimes, things don’t come out quite right. The one thing I don’t like about this photo is that the rocks in the sea are too large and too dark. They overwhelm the frame.
Also these rocks are anchored on the side of the frame and it somehow makes them feel even heavier. Maybe because it looks like there a ton more just outside the edge of the frame.
It would have been worse if I had spread them across the horizon, though. then the whole scene would have felt claustrophobic. But overall, I just couldn’t balance the scene well.
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