Specific Feedback Requested
any and all, particularly how to process the black and white conversion
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
iso 400 16 mm f11 1/320 sec
1 Like
Frankk
Really like this. Nice range of tones and the reflection (well placed in my view)
really makes this shot pop. Nice image
This is very nice,
Beautiful scene and, for me, the B/W conversion really works.
That’s a lovely scene Frank. The sweeping lines of the clouds add a lot, and I like the near/far composition.
It’s really hard to comment on the conversion without knowing what you started with, but that central mountain and the adjoining sky/reflection are quite dark. For my eye it almost has the opposite effect of a vignette. I wonder if it would help the flow if that area were lighter, and the bright right-side corners were darkened a tad?
You lose some real estate, but lens correction can help straighten those trees:
The only suggestion I have would be to straighten the leaning trees, which John has done in the rework.
This image definitely needed perspective correction to straighten the trees. @John_Williams rework also has the added benefit of of eliminating a few stray branches in the LRC that were a minor distraction.
I think the image would also benefit from some better balancing of tonality across the image. The left half is noticeably darker than the right half. Perhaps use of of a polarizer on a wide angle lens contributed to this issue. The blue sky directly above the mountain is much darker than the sky to the left or right, and this patch of sky is also darker than its reflection in the water (reflections are always darker in real life). Both of these things look somewhat un-natural. The water in the LRC is also brighter than the sky. I would darken the mid-tones in the right 40% of the image to try to balance tonalities.
Actually I do have another suggestion. The contrast in the image is greater to the left of the leftmost tree than to the right. The clouds on the left have good whites whereas on the right they lack that vitality. The image to the left of the tree has more vitality than that on the right. Personally, I like that left side more. I have no idea what reality looked like but the inconsistency is noticeable. This sort of relates to the comment @Ed_McGuirk made.
Nevertheless, this is a marvelous scene. You’ve got all the ingredients of a great image. Clouds, Reflections, Dramatic light. I think this is a very good image.
Oh, and one other thing. It’s the first thing I noticed. See how the white clouds all come to an abrupt halt at that leftmost tree? I find that bizarre. I guess it’s just a coincidence.
As @John_Williams said, without knowing what you started with it’s hard to know where you put your conversion efforts into your adjustments. However, The 2 things that stand out to me have already been mentioned. The luminosity in the sky compared to the foreground particularly with the dark cloud above the mountain top and also with the mountain shadows themselves. The reflection should be at least a half stop to a full stop darker than the sky. I also agree with @Igor_Doncov about the whites in the clouds. I think you could even those up a little bit as the clouds on the far right don’t have the pop they could have. There are also a couple of twigs in the lower central/right portion of the water that could get cleaned up as well as some white dots in the water (admittedly pixel peeping here). These are very small nitpicks for sure. I really like the leading line from the LLC taking you right into the mountains. This is a really nice scene you captured here and there is a lot to like about it.