Ocean Rocks 2

Hello Victor. You've got a very good image here. The shapes of the foreground components give it an etheral and unusual feel. And your choice of toning adds to that greatly. My only wish is that it was a taken from a slightly higher perspective to forestall the tendency for the eye to trip over the first high-contrast transition. But you could easily overcome that with a small crop up to the first highlight (if you wished to).
Best wishes, John.

Hey wow, thanks for all of the kind words! I probably should not tell you that I had doubts about this one.. guess it's all perspective, or being too involved as the photog.. as I have some images I think are great -that others don't think the same.

John M - I very much appreciate your time in offering ideas, but I'm not sure I understand the positon of the crop you are referring to.. Do you mean to take the bottom darkness out up to the first highlights of the closest rocks? Or do you mean to remove maybe half of the dark foreground?

Re: "my choice of toning" .. The final tones of any are never exactly what I had in mind.. I have a certain procedure of times, temps, diff order of baths, multi passes.. where I can aim for a color tone, but each density does what it does it seems.. I can get close results each time with the same neg/print, but each neg/print reacts differently to the very same steps given to another one. I usually make 10 to 18 almost identical prints from the same neg, the ones with flaws or mistakes I tear off a tiny corner so I know use those to experiment first with the toning that I think will work, then after seeing the first run of flawed prints, I'll make time / bath order adjustments.. I write down on the back of the print in pencil the order and times for each bath while the print is dry before I soak it in water for 5 minutes before toning, that way I can see without question the toning procedure for each print.. too much info???

"take the bottom darkness out up to the first highlights of the closest rocks or ... remove maybe half of the dark foreground?"

Well that's best left to yourself. But my personal preference would be to crop up to 3/4 of the first shadow and burn the BRH corner right in.
Multiple toning is certainly tricky but consistency of process seems to reduce the variances that are possible. Including consistency in washing cycles as part of the process is also important. Best, john.

John M, yes, I can see that, that works too, even though that would make the print no longer 8 x 10 because to raise the enlarger to crop it would mean spreading out by increasing the size of the rest of the elements in the rectangle which I knew I did not want to do.. Do you think that how in keeping the rocks higher that it is more possible to see the gulleys, nature at work, wearing down and forming the shapes?

Oh yes certainly. Perhaps I didn't explain my thoughts well. I just suggest a crop of the shadows without detail at the very bottom. But these decisions are best made within keeping of the author's own intent of course. Best.

Usually I do not care for water that is so blurred by extended exposure time, but in this image I think it really adds to the other worldly effect.

Spectacular Image. Well Done.

Regards,
John