What changed: darkened and desaturated the quartz at the bottom of the fall, brought down the light spot at the top of the frame, cloned out a couple items as suggested by Lon.
Added after receiving feedback from the community.
The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic + Technical
About This Image
This is Minnehaha Falls in north Georgia. It’s probably my favorite waterfall to photograph, and I’ve done that more times than I can count. This particular image was taken on a spring afternoon that just happened to be foggy in areas, which is where the mist at the top of the falls comes from.
Feedback Requested
All comments welcome.
Technical Details
Camera: Canon EOS 5D Mark IV
Lens: Zeiss Distagon T* 2.8/21 ZE
Focal length: 21mm
Shutter speed: 1/3s
Aperture: f/8
ISO: 100
Jonathan, this is an excellent look at this falls, with the fading into the fog as a fine extra benefit. Your shutter speed has smoothed the water to show off all of the small steps and the streamers, filling the middle of the frame with lots of interest and detail. I am finding the yellow/browns at the bottom distracting as their warmth conflicts with the coolness of the rest of the view. I could see cropping off the bottommost step and maybe desaturating the yellows or you could crop to 4x5 and remove almost all of the leaves.
Jonathan, this is a fine shot. I agree with Mark about the colors but I like the aspect ratio and I’d be reluctant to crop it. As an alternative, I tried converting it to black and white and like the result very much. My opinion is probably suspect because I like black and white.
Lovely waterfall Jonathon. Looks like you had to get in the water for this one! Composition and waterflow all look good to me.
Visual Notes
[A1] The eye flow is very nice to the top of the falls, but then my eye jumps to the top here because of the brightness. You might play with reducing the luminosity at the very top edge to let the eye focus at the top of the falls.
Mark, thank you for the comments and feedback. I do agree the quartz at the bottom of the fall (it’s a huge bed of it) is somewhat distracting to the rest of the image. I hesitate to crop it out because I like the bottom part of the water flow and the quartz itself is pretty intrinsic to Minnehaha. Having said that, I’m going to play around with it and tone it down a lot so it doesn’t catch the eye quite so much. Thank you again.
I have several black and white versions of this waterfall See above re: the quartz at the bottom.
I see what you mean, and that’s a great idea. I intend to incorporate that into my revision.
What a gorgeous look and capture of these falls. My first impression was that the cascade seemingly goes on forever; and with the fog up top, that feeling that the source or top of the falls is off at infinity somewhere..
I agree with the comment on the shutter speed and how all the little streams are captured and there is detail to explore and enjoy bottom to top.
I actually like the color contrast between the warm colors of the quartz at the bottom and the cooler greens up top. In fact, I wish there was more of the warm colors at the bottom! While agree cropping that bottom cascade would be problematic, the opposite is true for me - I want to see more. I’m wondering if you have another frame that includes more? Or, was there something you just didn’t want included?
I expect not many folks would go for this kind of edit, but went ahead and added a little canvas, and then stretched the bottom a little. Hopefully without too much noticable distortion. I also cloned out a number of little things that I’ll point out with the tool. This is just me, but when I have, or I see an image that is beautiful and worth the extra effort, I want to make it the best that it can be. And for that, a few things I thought I would take care of. Up top, I burned the fog just a tad, but also cloned/replaced that bright, open patch on the top edge right of center. Then on the UL edge, cloned out the dark trunk; it pulls the eye a bit. Then I cloned out a few little “specs” in the water and on the rock. Again, not everyone is this picky about things… so YMMV… Beautiful work!
See above re: the quartz at the bottom.
