Atlantic Sunrise #3

I went to the beach again the other morning and shot several hundred photos. After working in Adobe Photoshop for about 3 hours using layers, and making drastic changes in exposure and color from foreground to background layers, Now I have about ten good photos out of the hundreds. The best thing about digital photography is that you can continue shooting hundreds of photographs without stopping to reload old fashioned film. No worry about film expense! However, the foreground in most of the images is not detailed enough, way too grainy and often the water has a slight double image. I don't understand why grain is a problem. There is no film, so the random pattern of the grain shouldn't be present. But, I have huge color dots present in these photos. So, shutter speed was too slow, as was ISO too low - even though I must have the ISO low in order to keep the shutter speed fast enough to stop the motion of the water. Although I will only use these photos as aids to paint my pastels or as part of the mixed media distressed paintings - both for the “Waterworks,” - I’m disappointed.

Friends tell me that they can set their ISO up really high and still get photos that aren’t grainy. I can’t - I always get the BIG ANNOYING color dots. I’ve tried. I will use the tripod in the future to make sure the camera is completely stabile, but that won't fix the ISO problem. I may experiment with a higher ISO, lower shutter speed causing blurry, smooth "time exposed" water next sunrise photo-shoot. Still, I could use some help here, though perhaps I’m to persnickety. I will post a couple more of these photos from time to time because the color is perfect for my paintings. Never the less, I need some help to make them better as photographs when shooting in the future.