Nice shot. Your camera details shows that you had a lot of light, but it does not seem like hard sun?

How did you get that lightning? It looks like you bounced a flash or something. And I must say I like the sense of details.

moodaholic: the light was quite flat; i.e. lots of cloud cover.

Kjetil: no, I didn't use flash, but I did use a Curve to adjust the sky independently of the foreground and bucket.

wow! love those tones...damn, so rich and beautiful and the ground is awesome processed..we cant forget about the sky so shy revealed far away... pure art man! i look and i cant believe my eyes...everyday u catch more and more beutiful things and the way u show tthem to us is amazing...when i look at my photos i feel sorry for my photographic skills in a way, in the other way...ur work focus me to keep on!
enough with the sentimental bla bla....love this picture!

Great shot, your post processing is just amazing as usual.

Wow.. what amazing texture and detail. Good stuff!

beautiful processing and light.

Wouldn´t it be nice, if this bucket could tell us all the things it has seen.

I don't think this bucket ever looked so good as it does here. Nicely done!

j'en ai marre des photos de plages!!!! oiiinnn . non mais très bon cliché quand même. Bon traitement etc...

Really love this. Would be interested to see the original for comparison here as it looks as though you've worked some real magic with the colouring and toning. I've got two shots of some discarded hi-fi equipment I want to process in a similar way but I don't think I'll be able to do half as good a job tbh. Well done.

Nicely toned with lots of texture. It's amazing what ends up lying around on beaches..

I like the even lighting and texture, but don't see much more in the image. It doesn't stand out as particularly thought-provoking as the same thing -- if we could see all it's seen-- could be said of any piece of common trash.

I know what you mean about the mysterious history of lost objects found on the beach, but I think it's easier to see in unusual objects like your previous post of the TV on the beach.

Robert: I know what you mean about the TV being a more unusual object to find on the beach, but I find this bucket more mysterious: the TV was just old and broken, whereas this bucket has been melted and deformed and I guess I find that more engaging, in some ways at least; i.e. I not only wonder about how it got to the beach, but also about what happened to it first.

Damn Dave, I wanna come to have a walk on Fleetwood beach! The bucket is interesting by itself, but you enhanced its telling some strange story. Great shot, as ever.

How do you obtain so much details in your images? Their are always very sharp and defined. Is it just a Mpx matter?

"How do you obtain so much details in your images? Their are always very sharp and defined. Is it just a Mpx matter?"

Marco: it's got very little to do with the number of megapixels. For example I took this shot with a Fujifilm FinePix point and shoot camera, and the detail is great. Anyway, to answer your question: it's got much more to do with how you prepare your images for the web.

Basically, in my opinion at least, you need to do two things. First, you need to incrementally downsize your images – I use Web Presenter Pro – as this produces more detailed images. Second, you need to sharpen them using USM or Smart Sharpen (if you're using CS2). I can't really tell you what settings to use, as it depends on the sharpness and clarity of the original images (not to mention the amount of sharpening you apply when you convert from RAW), but I can say that it's worth spending some time either practicing or researching these tools.

Wow! I don't know if it is my new monitor, but that picture is breathtaking. I love the detail. The pictures makes it look like the bucket is some sort of artifact worth putting in a museum.

You definitely are the master at capturing texture. I would love a tutorial on your post processing techniques.

Also, if you do this much with texture I would love to see examples of you focusing on line, form, colour, etc! I'm sure they would be just as stunning.

Thank you for sharing your photos with us!

Cool bucket dude keep up the good work.

Well, I like the sharpness of the rocks and stones...pretty bland sky however (and I know there isnt much you could do anout it). Yeah, bucket not too much to my taste.

the sparseness of the location is captivating.

great image!! the way you create so much interest in ordinary objects is wonderful. And thanks for the tip on how to get detail for the web.

Great shot!

Great shot of the bucket. I must say, the post production in your photographs are amazing.

Did you take it to the bin after you had taken a shot (or three) of it? Even if you didn't, I find this a great image, as ever.

I really ought to visit more often than I do. I share your fascination with washed up objects and their stories. I wish I could photgraph them as you do.

like the details at the ground and the container is a surreal thing in there.
like it very much.

I wonder - do you post these images at 72dpi and if so when do you apply this? I notice that Fred's Web Presenter doesn't do this bit for you.

Great texture details in the sand and on the bucket. Nice camera angle to set the shot against the sky.

"First, you need to incrementally downsize your images" - I took a look at the FM pluggin, but I'm not sure I understand what incremental downsizing is; could you please elaborate a bit more?

"...original images (not to mention the amount of sharpening you apply when you convert from RAW)." Do you apply any sharpening before converting from RAW? I usually keep sharpening to min (0?) before raw convertion and post-processing. But you always get such amazing results, I'm curious to know. :)

Great pic as always. I espcially like the (almost) foggy background.

-partha

Thanks all.

Jennifer: dpi doesn't much matter when you post images on the web insofar as they'll be displayed at screen resolution (normally around 72dpi) irrespective of the actual dpi of an image.

Partha: incremental downsizing is when you resize in stages, e.g. 3500px wide, to 3000px, then 2500px, and so on, rather than simply going from the high res' image straight to the resized one.

despite finding the subject a little dull I actually really like this image! just the colours and textures... oh sod it the object has grown on me now!!!

it looks like it has a mouth and thats enough for me!

Great detail, great processing, great capture...

Nice.