Ocean or Water Horizon Shots – please critique

[Neal Osborn]

I have finished post editing my pictures from Belize and I have a few questions for the experts. I appreciate everyone’s comments on my first set of pics regarding the “tilting” horizons (ie sea-sickness feel to the tilting horizons).  Corrected that issue in post.  

Feel free to post some pics of your own work related to water horizons if they help to clarify a point or comment.

First question . . . with “far off” horizon shots is it generally better to show more water in the foreground like in the first/original below or is it better to crop to give more of a horizontal broad feel to the picture like in the second edit?  I personally like the second picture better but am wondering if there is a general standard to water horizon shots.  FYI, for this shot I used my 18-200 lens instead of the telephoto because I wanted to capture those great early morning colors on the water, so that is really the focus of the shot.

Original

Crop/edit

Secondly, when taking pictures of the flats with a UV filter like the shot below is it best to show most of the water like the original or should one crop to give a horizon?  In this picture I don’t have a fisherman or mangrove to give depth perception so I am wondering what is best to do with shots like this.

Original

Edit with more water in foreground

Edit with equal water/horizon/sky

What do you think of these shots of the fish traps and shrub island? Anything you would do differently?

[David Anderson]

I think fishing is about water so tend to show more water than sky – an exception might be if the clouds are really cool.
The old rule of thirds works well with big wide horizon shots, 1 third water to two thirds sky or vise versa.

The first shot should show more water because the water is more interesting that the clouds (IMHO), some of the others are the same.

All the shots look good BTW.. 😉

www.dsaphoto.com

A picture is thousand words that takes less than a second while a thousand words is a picture that takes a month.

[Zach Matthews]

I am with David.  The main thing I notice is that every image has the horizon line basically in the exact middle, which is a bit of a no-no.  Don’t be afraid to let the horizon ride the very top or very bottom of the image, even more extreme than the rule of thirds.  Don’t be afraid to try a vertical shot, either.

The only scenario I can think of when the horizon should be dead-centered is if you have a nice reflection, such as of the sun setting, and you are trying to highlight their opposition.  Even then, the effect can be a little more “optical illusion” than description, which is usually not what we are going for with outdoor photography.

Zach

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