Title • down to the sea #4

Here's another shot taken during my recent trip to the UK, and beyond that I guess I don't have too much to say about this one, at least not in terms of the image itself.

One thing that is worth mentioning though ...

As you can see from the original, this was shot on a dull flat day. In many ways, particularly in terms of post-production, I prefer flat light – an image with a reasonably restricted tonal range is often much easier to edit than one with harsh shadows and highlights. The downside of shooting in these conditions though is that the sky is often a uniform shade of grey, or subtle variations thereof. In these circumstances there isn't a lot you can do, i.e. you can try increasing the contrast, but if the sky is very dull this just results in all of it getting brighter or all of it getting darker: there's just no detail to bring out. In these circumstances toning an image (as described in my Toning Colour Images tutorial) can be a useful solution, i.e. rather than having some interesting detail in the foreground, offset against a grey nothingness in the background, the toning unifies the image, tying the foreground to the background.