Pembrokeshire Coast

[DeadpanDodo]

I only joined the forum about 10 days ago, and after a few posts on the beginners forum bought a Samsung NX11 mirrorless camera with the 18-55mm kit lens of eBay for the fairly miserly sum of £103 inc postage. Since it arrived last Wednesday I've only had a couple of chances to try it out.

I'm very fortunate, living in Pembrokeshire, to get such easy access to some tremendous seascapes.

With some trepidation I'm posting a couple of photos for comment.

The first was taken late afternoon on Newgale beach - depicting the pebble sea defences and wooden walkway. (You may remember the news a year ago depicting a stranded bus swept off the road by the sea during the storms that affected so much of the west coast of the UK. Well this is where it happened). This picture was taken within the first 20 minutes of first switching the NX11 camera on.


Newgale Beach 1024 by DeadpanDodo on Talk Photography

The second photo was taken on Saturday on Monkstone Beach looking towards Tenby. It was taken at low tide on what was one of the lowest low tides in over 18 years - hence the endless expanses of beach. This was on the second outing for the Samsung NX11.


Tenby Monkstone Low Tide 1024 by DeadpanDodo on Talk Photography

I've also had my first attempt at combining bracketed exposures for greater dynamic range, and at any sort of post-production really other than cropping and resizing. For reference - my last attempts at creative photography were decades ago (photography O level in 1986 with a Zenith TTL and Ilford multigrade papers) and so I'm gobsmacked at what can now be achieved on the computer. Hence I realise that I have most likely overdone the "special effects".

Anyway - I'm having great fun - and know I've got a steep learning curve - but looking forwards to improving all aspects of my photography. This forum looks like a great source of advice and inspiration.

Best Regards.

 

[droj]

Your first has a pleasing simplicity but you might liven it up a bit by the use of levels and curves adjustments, if that means anything? In particular, there's nothing in the image that approaches pure white, so that end of the tonal range might be tightened up, and that might be enough. Delicacy in all is a good rule, though.

The second might benefit from a little (less) of the same treatment .... try it and see ...

Having said the above though, neither image suffers from the colour photographer's bane of 'blown highlights', so you (or your camera?) is doing something right exposure-wise.

 

[DeadpanDodo]

Droj,

Thanks for your comments. You are quite right in thinking that I may be a bit lost regarding levels and curves. I'm finding LightRoom 4 to be steep learning and some of the adjustments I've made have been trial and error. For example in order to create more white highlights in the first photo I would probably play with contrast and exposure settings but I'm guessing that there are better ways of achieving this. I'm aware that changing one parameter in order to improve one aspect of a photo may have other adverse unintended consequences for the image. I've looked at a few online tutorials and Youtube videos re LightRoom but I think I need a more generic guide to what the actual principles involved in post production are and how they interact.