Hi Gloria, as I look at this image I cannot help but wonder why more photographers, rather than fishermen, are not washed off East Coast rocks every year? Personally, I just want to get closer to the action whenever I can, but that’s not easy when you have got two-metre surf breaking into the coast.
Now, to the photo. One of the first things you should always ask yourself before beginning work on a photograph is simply, where do my eyes want to go as I look at this image?
In this instance my eyes want to go to directly to the bright water in the bottom and the right of the scene, rather than looking at the breaking wave. It's no different to trying to enjoy Beethoven while the kid next door is bashing on his drum kit – the distraction is always going to win out. You have the option of doing one of two things here; the first it to darken the foreground with the Burn tool (make sure it is set to Highlights in the dialogue) but the other option is to simply crop the bottom of the picture... if you wanted to you can crop all the water along the bottom of the frame but leave the first run of rocks.
The next thing I want to do is eliminate some of that dead grey sky from above the wave but rather than immediately cropping the sky, I am actually going to suggest pulling down the clouds closer to the horizon. How to do this? Start by making a duplicate of the background layer and then use the Move tool to drag that new layer down about 15 percent. What this has done is bring a copy of the clouds closer to the wave s but now you will need to eliminate everything except the clouds from this top layer. To do this, add a layer mask to the top layer (Layer > Layer Mask > Reveal All); if you look at the Layers Panel you will now see the mask appearing as a white panel next to the new layer. Now, select the Paintbrush tool, make sure that the foreground colour is set to black in the tool box and then start painting over the lower half of the image… you will now start hiding the top layer and revealing the lower layer. Paint until all you have left on this top layer is your new clouds. Make sure when doing this that you have the brush feathered so that the blending is soft and not hard. Remember also, what is great about brushing on masks is that is you make a mistake, all you need to do is tap the X key to swap back from Black to White and you can re-paint back in what you have omitted. Now, crop the sky a little and flatten the image (Layers > Flatten Image) and you are ready to do a Save As (always do this rather than saving over an original file).
Now, one last thing – I would massage the tones a little using the Burn and the Dodge tools. Start with the Burn tool, choose a big brush and adjust the Selection range for Shadows… now use it to darken the sky. Swap over now to the Dodge tool and make sure that it is set to the Highlights and dodge the wave. Have a good play with this technique because with practice it can be a useful way of manipulating the tones in an image.
Cheers, the Doctor.
Stormy Sea - Image Doctor's edited version
