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Image Description
Hi there!
I took this image three days ago in the Dolomites (afternoon) and I was pretty lucky about the conditions. After driving around for two days I finally found a field with some great wild flowers. But I have some technical issues with the image. Thanks for taking the time!
Technical Details
1/160 sec
f16
ISO 200
Specific Feedback
I have technical questions:
After the first edit I somehow can’t get rid of the feeling that colorwise something is not quite right, or at least could be done better. Do you have any idea?
The bigger problem: The flowers in the foreground are not sharp. I took the image with my 9mm 7artisans lens, which I quite like, but it’s a manual lens, so I don’t get feedback when not focused. Also, at f16 it seems that one has to be careful of the borders. I already ran it through Topaz, but I can’t get it much sharper. Do you think this one is lost?
Critique Template
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This is just my personal opinion. My initial reaction was I like the composition, the subject matter, the dramatic sky, but my enjoyment is tempered by my feeling that when using the near/far compositional technique, you should have maximum DOF from front to back. Maybe you were trying to give the sense of a small pre storm wind imparting a sense of movement to the flowers, but in that case I feel they all should be blurry, not just the ones closest to the camera. As it is I feel it just looks OOF. Now if you were down low shooting through OOF FG flowers like a wall of color, I think that would work. But as it is, it just looks like a mistake. But what do I know. Rules are meant to be broken.
Edit: After reading your thoughts I see you were also concerned about the OOF FG. I think the FG is beyond Topaz’s ability to sharpen. I am not a color expert but it looks fine to my eye. To answer your question: Unless you can find a suitable crop to get rid of the OOF flowers, then yes I feel it is lost.
My initial thought was i love it - the sky and the mountain is just so dramatic. I think having all the foreground flowers in focus would improve it, but it is just stunning.
Markus,
I really want to like this, but I can’t get past all those OOF flowers in the FG. You certainly had some wonderful conditions and everything else looks great. I cropped off some of the flowers; I didn’t want to go to far: and came up with this. There as still some OOF ones there, but this works better IMO. What do you think?
@Ed_Lowe, thank you so much! This looks like a good idea to me. think I will try cutting out the flower in the LRC which is cut in half. Then I will reconsider publishing it;-)
A great scene, and definitely NOT a lost cause!
Ed’s suggested crop works well. A few OOF flowers are not a distraction.
My eye is draw to the blown area atthe top of the peak, si I’d bring that down a touch.
Fine image all in all!
Markus, I like the composition but I think you need to improve on the lens distortion in the mid ground hut and trees. The barrel affect works for this image on borders but not so much elsewhere.
I found another bracketing shot with sharper flowers and used it for the foreground. It’s still not tack sharp, but I guess it’s a bit better. Also, I removed the hut as it really was tilted and uninhabitable, haha.
Still, not one for the portfolio, but maybe for IG. Thanks again to all of you!
My initial reaction is the flowers are beautiful, however the bright patch in the sky confuses me in that my attention is divided between the flowers and the bright patch. The second piece is that the scaling seems unusual, the disparity being between the flowers and the mountain itself, with the flowers being a big object and in my mind, the mountain a small object.
Perhaps my confusion can be helped by darkening the bright spots behind the mountain and cropping the photo to 8 by 10, removing the bottom of the frame. You may well need to go back to the original 16 bit file to correct the bright spots.
actually, if you changed between flowers and mountain, then (from my pov) the image workes perfectly fine
And the bright spot in combination with the mountain is absolutely supposed to attract your attention. I don’t want viewers to stop in the foreground. The hero is the background object/mountain, not the flowers.
Also, as a big-to-small-transition the mountain is supposed to be smaller that anything in the foreground. That’s (for me) the beauty of those images which makes them interesting (see Marc Adamus or Ryan Dyar for example).
Thank you so much for your feedback anyway! I hope you can get some of my points.
