Before the rain

[Markus_Albert]

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

How do you like the overall mood and light situation? Would you improve anything?

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

I shot this image last weekend in Snowdonia while hiking up a mountain. This was a real quick shot, as my fellow hikers went on and it started raining. No tripod, one exposure only (f16) to get sharpness from front to back.

Technical Details

[Ronald_Murphy]

You’ve nicely brought out the light on the foreground, and I like how the rocks and the distant lake align. The dynamic range is well controlled too.

[Merv (Mervin Rosenquist)]

@Markus_Albert

How do you like the overall mood and light situation?

I love the mood and lighting in this, Markus!

The depth and the FG colors are great! I also like the boulders and the slope of the middle ground area. The lake in the distance really adds a lot of interest for me and the clouds are amazing, especially since they shroud the distant mountain peak they way they do!

@Markus_Albert

Would you improve anything?

Personally, I would consider cropping the bottom, maybe take this to a 4:3 ratio (I mention the ratio only as a means of conveying how much to crop off the bottom). I just feel that the area with no flowers and being dark is slightly negative, it creates a void but this is subjective, meaning it’s just my personal opinion.

I see some banding in the sky and around the bright area at the URC, I’m using a 2K ASUS ProArt monitor so I don’t feel that it’s an issue with my monitor. I did notice that this is almost 4000x5900 pixels, yet the file size is only 873 KB, I’m guessing that NPN resampled the file size and compressed it some. To avoid NPN compressing the file size, try uploading at less than 3 MB, preferably around 2MB or close to it and maybe resize the image to around 2500 pixels wide for a vertical image.
4000 pixels wide is great for pixel peeping though

Also, I noticed that the flowers and boulders are slightly soft and that may also be from the added compression.

I downloaded your image and ran it through Topaz for noise reduction and it seemed to clear up that banding issue, there was still just a touch of banding around the bright URC area so I bumped the exposure up a tiny bit so solve that part.
Of course I feel that uploading at a lower file size might clear up the banding and maybe I’m the only one that sees banding to begin with?
My point with the example edit is to demonstrate that noise reduction can be used to clear up banding issues in cases where jpeg compression isn’t the cause.

I reduced the image size by 50% but I can’t see the file size until after I upload the image.
Edit: After it uploaded to NPN, it appears to be 2.27 MB, it was saved from Ps at 2.32 MB so NPN’s compression was very minor.

I suggest having a look at the file size of your saved image and compare it to the file size of the uploaded image.

Anyway, I hope this helps and again, love it, I wish I could have witnessed this scene in person!!

[Tom_Nevesely]

Beautiful shot Markus! I really like the colours, the light, and the composition has a really nice flow to it. I don’t think I would change a thing.

[Eric_Bennett]

This is a nice scene! It depends on what you are going for, but I would just play with brightening and darkening different areas. Right now the foreground, mid ground, and background are so close together in luminance that overall the scene feels very flat, and I don’t feel the light. I think if it were mine I would darken the foreground just slightly more at the bottom edge, as well as the boulders so they draw less attention. Then I would darken some of the mid ground so the glowing lake and light stand out more next to it. You could darken the top left corner of the cloud as well. I see a bit of noise/banding, especially in the sky too, but that could just be because of the jpeg compression. If not, then you might have pushed this one too much, or processed it in 8bit color instead of 16bit. I would double check those things in case that bothers you.

[jefflafrenierre]

@Eric_Bennett’s feedback is excellent here, so I won’t try to add to that. I did want to simply mention how much I like the overall composition and mood of this image. Thanks for sharing it.

[Igor_Doncov]

Marvelous image with a lot of atmosphere, both literal and figurative. I liked the light to dark look to it but felt it was a bit too dark. I looked at it in a brightly lit room so that may have something to do with it. I brought up the white point a tad and diffused the highlights. I also felt it could use a small crop of the bottom. The composition of going from flowers to rocks to lake to sky is marvelous. I thought bringing up the flowers just a bit would emphasize it more.

[Markus_Albert]

Thank you, guys, for your constructive feedback and your propositions! I will take another round of edits.

[Donna_Callais]

Markus, I love this composition. The beautiful flowers leading you into the giant stones that line up with the small pond in the distance and then the stormy mountain and clouds really make a great path for the viewer. I like the softer look on these type of dramatic landscape. I do agree with others about cropping a little off the bottom and the lighting is a little flat like Eric mentioned. I would be thrilled to have taken this image and it makes me want to be there. Great job!

[Kathryn_Garlick]

Wow! What a gorgeous image. I really like the foreground and while I agree cropping a little at the bottom wouldn’t hurt, I think if this were my shot, I would try dodging the hillsides on either side of the lake making them look darker as though they were in shadow to give the middle section of the photo more definition and mood. Love the photo.

[Mike_Hayden]

This is gorgeous, as others have said. If you could move left a few feet, the image would be stronger. The foreground rocks then become an anchor for the eye path to the distance. Now, the first thing I see is the vertical path from rock to mountain, and it takes a bit of work to get the rest of the image.