Room for improvement C&C

This is a sunrise shot taken in Amble Northumberland. I keep playing around with it in Photoshop and the abandoning it, to me it has some compositional merit but I can't quite make it work. So to that end I would appreciate any comments and suggestions for improvement.

I think compositionally it's pretty nice. It does look a bit soft, though which is surprising given 1/60th second and F/16. Is there a lot of JPEG compression? What sharpening did you do, if any?

The image looked ok before I uploaded it to Photobucket, it does seem to have softened it considerably.

I like it. Put it on a calander. As for improvements Bikini clad wrestelers LOL.
Steven

I think bikini wearing wrestlers may suffer from hypothermia on my coastline

I does look a little soft Graham but the compresion in Photobucket may be to blame. The quality of the light in the photo is excellent which makes it a very appealing picture. I wonder if you worked a little on the contrast of the mud bank in the foreground and tweaked the glint on the boats whether it it would give the picture added impact.
david

Graham I hope you don't mind, did a quicky.
A tritone was what I had in my mind, what do you think, black, blue and yellow/orange.
[IMG]http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk244/Anvh/_IGP7151v2x.jpg[/IMG]

My fear is that the burnt out area on the right will always prevent you from making this work. You do have two strong triangles and the rectangle of the sky but the sky isn't strong enough as it stands. Have you tried selectively darkening the sky to see if that helps? I suspect it will just end up looking odd. I think you were between a rock and a hard place as the bright sky needed the correct exposure but that would kill the foreground. You can't exclude the very bright area because then you lose the points of the triangles.

Personally I'd move on to something I could make work.

Now watch as someone steps in and does a wonderful job on it!

Mike

As Robert Capa once said:
"If a picture doesn't work, you probably weren't close enough!"




Your sensor needs some cleaning btw.

Mike, something like this?
It's hard not to kill something, if you push it you will kill the contrast for sure.
The blue is a feature though and I can remove the saturation if that's better, also this done with a low quality JPG with a RAW file you can recover a lot more.

[IMG]http://i282.photobucket.com/albums/kk244/Anvh/_IGP7151v2x2.jpg[/IMG]

@ Stefan. Nope that's still got that terrible burnt out area which without some very clever cloning will always be its main weakness. The sky is tending towards funny looking as well.

@ Malo - nice work on the sky etc. but you've lost the point of the composition surely which was the convergence of the triangles.

I wasn't going to say it but I bet Graham was standing up when he took this. Even in my decrepit state I think I would have got lower and either had a lot more sky or a lot less sky. If it was a zoom lens then I blame that as a prime would have got your feet muddy for you

Move on I say!

Mike

Heres my effort, if anyone thinks its good and wants to know what i did ask

Oh dang - I'm mr moany here but that area of bright light looks even more odd - as always IMO!

Mike

Even if you clone it out you've the problem the reflection isn't working so that would mean you need to clone out everything of the photo

Sorry Mike,
I don't agree this time. There are enough compositional lead-in lines to anchor the main subject and help guide the eyes. Less is often more.