Rework
Critique Style Requested: Initial Reaction
Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.
Questions to guide your feedback
Is this what you would expect to find in the Great Plains?
Other Information
Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.
Image Description
As the sun sets on the horizon it highlights the clouds above as well as making the spires nearly silhouettes. Some details remain visible in the deepest shadows and the foreground rocks and vegetation show backlit highlights.
Technical Details
Canon EOS 5D IV; Canon EF 16-35mm @ 35mm; f/22 @ 1/50 sec, -1 EV, ISO 320; Gitzo tripod, remote trigger
Specific Feedback
Whatever you wish, positive or otherwise
My initial reaction was, of course, to be awed by the dramatic sky and silhouettes. Then started to enjoy the clouds in the middle sky. Then I started to get picky … wondered what the effect would be of less sky, or less foreground (both are interesting). Then wondered why the light shining on the foreground brush was not illuminating their textures (figured you wanted to keep the strong silhouette effect, but doing more with the foreground would be an interesting alternative direction). Then noticed a lot of green chromatic aberration along the silhouettes.
A few things could be done, but then again, maybe picky me could also just relax and enjoy the shapes and colors.
Thank you @Dick_Knudson for pointing out the greenish halo between the sky and foreground. That is not on my original .psd file, nor .jpg before submission. I have experienced variable defects corrupting my files, made mention of it to David Kingman asking if the AI processing at NPN may be generating this. I believe it is a sharpening artifact to accentuate the dark/light difference to enhance the appearance of sharpening.
I will look into it on my end.
There is certainly no AI processing happening, nor is there anything done to your uploaded file unless the jpg is over 100 MB. This looks like a sharpening artifact to me, if you really don’t see this, please send me the jpg at david@naturephotographers.network so I can review it.
Thank you @David_Kingham for you assurances that AI is NOT affecting submitted images, I raised the question because I often see an AI tag appear when I am completing a submission. I am attaching that flag
My submissions are far from 100MB, usually in the 250KB range.
I am convinced that the artifact can be exaggerated by sharpening but I do not sharpen my images for submission. I noted some other artifacts and in order to determine where they were introduced I went all the back to my DNG>RAW >psd files and every iteration/layer of the image. It seems that the sky was selectively moved up a few pixels at one stage generating the gap, revealing the subjacent layer. The biggest clue was there were two suns, void of color stacked one vertically above the other. The image has been on my website since May of 2021 without the defect, so it must have been generated at a later date.
I will post the Rework shortly.
That AI button your seeing is for text only, it can help you look something up quickly. There are also some AI tools to help with grammar, etc., but nothing for images.
Thank you @David_Kingham for your timely reply. I only noticed the “flag” but had no idea why it was appearing.
