Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
After two days of rain at lower altitudes and snow above about 7500 ft, the clouds started lifting, so I went looking for fall colors and snowy mountains. Clearly I was successful as this view up Horse Creek towards Sphinx Mountain shows.
R5, 100-400 @ 151, 1/500 s, f/16, iso 800, tripod
I know that this image is about the storm but the bottom area steals the show. Yellows tend to do that. The fall colors are gorgeous in their glow. I can see a fine panorama here.
A tremendous sense of grandeur and scale in this scene. That helps me connect to it and appreciate just how much you included. All the colors and luminosity values look great and I like the softer undulations of the fore & mid-ground against the more jagged peaks. I really need to get to Montana again. It’s been over a decade, but since out favorite all-inclusive resort started to nickel and dime us, we haven’t found another.
The contrasts are always beautiful in fotography but here it seems too high for my eyes. A lower saturation of the yellow in the foreground and a bit of more light in the lower and higher clouds? After all the rain is gone. But probably this is just me.
Mark, this is a really nice photo. What a scene to see in person! But as others have noted it is almost two separate photos. I really like the subtle interplay of the white clouds and the white snow on the mountain. But also, the yellows of the foreground are spectacular. But maybe too spectacular, because they pull the eye away from the subtler background.
As @Giuseppe_Guadagno suggested, perhaps a balancing of the foreground and background would work.
I gave it a try by decreasing the contrast of the foreground by about 30 pts. Then, using Lightroom’s new point color I brought the saturation of theforeground yellows down by about 10 points. In the background I brought shadows and whites up by about 10 pts. I think it balances better. But I miss the yellows! So I’m not sure its an improvement.
Will for me it works, it is a sure improvement but here in Europe we like less saturated photos than in the USA.
I love this shot as is. Having grown up in Montana and now living in Colorado, we often see images like this - the cool tones of snow and mist on the mountains juxtaposed against the almost unreal brilliance of warm fall colors in the valleys, particularly when the sun hits the valley floor. Scenes like this always make me want to go horseback riding.
