Dingle Bay

NAME Dingle Bay

I took this shot on one of Dingle's beautiful beaches. Unfortunately I was not going to be able to return to this place at sunset or sunrise so I had to make the most of what I had. I found these really nice craggy rocks jutting out from the sand, and luckily they were being 'carresed' by the tide. Even with my ND8, ND4, polariser and f stop 22 I couldn't stop down my exposure any further than 1/15 sec which is the min shutter speed reccomended for bluring water. But as I couldn't get a nice 'milky' effect anyway, I am glad that this was the only speed avaliable as I think it conveys the movement of the water quite well.
I got quite drenched shooting at this beach. This is literally the first time I have ever taken serious photos on a beach and I was kinda shocked when a knee high wave came crashing into me and my gear while I was distracted by the lcd on my cam. Luckily only my and my tripod got a soaking so im pleased at my efforts. Thats dedication for you!
Anyway, at 18mm, to fill the frame with any sort of forground, I had to get really close. But this again meant getting in the water. But heck, I had already got wet, and couldn't get any wetter. And to the bemused curiosity of the general public watching my peril I walked straight into the water, not turning a blind eye.

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Location The Dingle Peninsular, Ireland
Date 21/08/08
Time 4:45
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Camera Body Nikon D300
Lens 18-55mm 1:3.5 5.6 G
Focal Length 18mm
Shutter Speed 1/15 sec
Aperture f22
ISO 100

Tripod
Manfrotto 785SHB
Filters
Cokin ND8 light grad, ND4, Hoya circular polariser

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Processing
Processing for this picture and the newer ones in my gallery require a much more lengthly stint in my D Darkroom!
And I though, to show any curious begginers and let them in on some useful editing techniques, here is from opening to saving, my edit.

I edited in PS CS3. But these techniques can be followed almost as accurately on CS and CS2

before opening in main PS i did a raw conversion. this mainly consisted of, fixing the exposure slightly, adding saturation, contrast and removing vignetting <---- freaking pain

Open > duplicate layer > Image > adjustments > selective colour
Channels: black > black +15, white > white - 15, and some fiddling around with the blues, adding magenta and stuff. > flatten image
Then, Duplicate layer > Image > black and white (I believe this can only be done on cs3) I chose the blue filter preset for the sky and a red or something for the forground. I then got meself a layer mask and painted black over the forground to reveal the B&W conversion of that layer.
[flatten, duplicate]
I then broke the image down into the main parts (ie sky, rocks, water...) and did a feathered levels adjustment of each (feather radius of 100px)
[flatten, duplicate]
Now comes the doging and burning.
size set to 50, hardness 20 and channel on highlights I went over most of the image like the clouds and the highlights on the rock. Vise versa with the burn tool.....
Finally I used the high pass filter set to overlay and 45% opacity to sharpen, and then an unsharp mask to finish
All done

[a separate high pass adjustment was made for the rocks so as not to sharpen and ruin the water and sky too much. this was set to quite a high opacity and filter thingy.