South Myrtle Beach Panorama – Amberle Moore
The photo is a fifty percent crop of a photo my daughter took on a stormy day at Myrtle Beach, SC, July this year. In the original photo there was building in the foreground that distracted from the curving beach panorama in the background so I changed the aspect ratio and cropped the foreground out. The beach front fading and curving off frame to the right was what first caught my eye. I also like the small sailboat you can just make out beached along the lower frame.
It’s always the little things, the details, that make the difference in liking or loving a photo.
With the stormy day and low light conditions the colors were already subdued and the scene seemed to beg for a black and white conversion. I adjusted for a balance between contrast and noise. However, I think some graininess adds to the mood of this particular photo as does the soft focus.
It’s always neat finding a photo within a photo.
This would be a circumstances where I could see the merit in a higher mega-pixel camera. In this case the original photo was taken with a Nikon D200 10.2MP camera so with a 50% crop we’re talking about the above photo being in the 5MP range*. If this shot had been taken with say a Nikon D3X 24.5MP camera the above cropped photo would still be in the 12MP range…about the same as a D300 or D700 photo un-cropped.
*Note: Cropping this image along with a change of aspect ratio did leave almost the full horizontal pixel count.
This is a great picture, you did well with the cropping and adjustments. The contrasty tones and the overall grain definitely sets this picture to the right mood. And yet that, there is still lots of details, like the sailboat you mentioned. I also see all these dark windows. It’s like a ghost town, the only light you see is at the basement of the first building and a few windows in the others. It seems not to be high season. Great work, of both of you!
Earl, I guess that the need for those extra pixels would depend on what you plan to do with them. If you plan to print, certainly they would come in handy. If you are going to display them on the web page, as in this case, then it’s probably good enough. So, when are you going to buy the D3x or perhaps the D700x? :-)
@Ove: It took a good bit of post-processing to bring out some of that detail but I agree about the mood of the photo.
@Paul: To your last question first…currently no plans for a new camera! For the moment I’m living vicariously through your obtainment of new cameras. ;-) I’m looking forward to seeing some of those Olympus / Leica rangefinder comparison photos.
For printing, certainly a higher pixel camera could have advantages but only at larger print sizes or when post processing cropping takes place. In this case of this photo, cropping over 50% on a 10MP image, it probably would have helped with the details a bit even for web publishing. But I don’t see a compelling advantage of higher pixels in ‘my’ normal photography–especially considering the current prohibitive higher cost of those extra pixels.