Crested Butte Wildflowers + Rework

Critique Style Requested: Standard

The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.

Description

Mesmerizing wildflower scenes in this peak season in crested butte. I could really appreciate the wild beauty in nature here. Photographing wildflowers was very challenging for me between flower movement, and technical aspects of exposure and movemment, in the wind and in developing compositions. Thoroughly enjoyable though. Lots of high isos to allow for fast enough shutter speeds.

Technical Details

40mm f/11 1/125 iso 2000. Used Topaz denoise .

2 Likes

Lovely scene you found here Mario.
A few thoughts… I think your image could benefit from a bit more care in balancing the edits. It is just a bit obvious that you’ve used a graduated filter in LR from the bottom up to add more light to the bottom half of the scene. Try using the same technique but intersecting it with a luminosity range and perhaps try a bit more feathering with it. The tonal range between the bottom of the frame shouldn’t be too much different than that hillside on the left, yet one is light and one is dark.

Agree that it is a lovely and captivating scene, but the edits are obvious and not harmonious. The luminosities should blend better than they do here. A foreground this bright wouldn’t have a sky so dark, nor would the rest of the land be as dark. Matt’s suggestions could be a good place to start. I hope you revisit and put up a new shot, this deserves some more finessed treatment.

Hi Mario :slight_smile:

What a great subject with a great environment for the BG, and what a great place to experience in person!

Please keep in mind that everything I write is purely my personal point of view, use whatever you deem useful to you and simply disregard the rest. :slight_smile:

By the title and the brightness of the wildflowers, this is obviously all about the wildflowers but, with an awesome mountainous BG which includes a wonderful magenta sky.
I agree that the brightness (luminance) should be a little closer together between the wildflowers and the rest of the scene since everything is in focus but IMHO, the mountains should be slightly blurred, having a blurred BG would allow the FG to be a little brighter without setting off any visual alarms.

I noticed that you used f/11 for the aperture opening and that you were struggling a little with motion from the wind.
Without knowing what the maximum aperture opening is for your lens, I’d say that the widest opening or at least an aperture of f/4 on a 40mm lens would have been a better choice to get a blurred BG. Of course it’s a good idea to pay attention to lens diffraction at the widest and smallest openings.
An f/4 aperture would also allow you to bump up the shutter speed by three stops which takes it from 1/125s to 1/1000s at ISO 2000, or you could have set the shutter speed to 1/500s and reduced the ISO to 1000 (this would give you the same exposure value as the 1/125s, f/11 & ISO 2000 setting).

At f/4 on a 40mm lens, the DOF is roughly 430 feet with the focus point set at roughly 40 feet.
So, everything from roughly 20 feet from the camera out to 450 feet would be in reasonable focus, focus would progressively become more and more blurred beyond 450 feet.
The above information isn’t based on hyperfocal distance calculations but hyperfocal distances can be very useful for having basically everything in reasonable focus if that’s your goal, so, if you’re not familiar with hyperfocal distances I would recommend giving it some study time since you enjoy shooting landscape scenes (please forgive the recommendations if you are already completely familiar with them, I’m just trying to be helpful :slight_smile: ).

Here’s an online DOF and Hyperfocal Distance Calculator if you don’t already have one, I have this one set on my cell phone home screen so I can access it quickly and easily while in the field.
Link>>>PhotoPills DOF Calculator

I done a quick edit example to demonstrate how this scene might look with the BG slightly blurred and with the FG wildflowers still slightly brighter than the rest of the scene.
Since the wildflowers are the main subject, I cropped out some of the sky since it doesn’t really help to emphasize the wildflowers and I cropped the FG slightly because it was mostly just grass blades.
I cropped this at 16:9 to keep the sides but any aspect ratio would work if you’re OK with losing some of the sides.

If you would like detailed information on how I did the edit, please feel free to ask. I didn’t include it in this post in case this edit doesn’t appeal to you.

And of course the edits would be much easier with the RAW image file, adjusting the brightness and other elements in this fairly low res jpeg file was a little challenging but it should get the idea across.

It’s a wonderful scene and it’s one that I wish I could have experienced in person :slight_smile:

Thank you @Merv @Kris_Smith @Matt_Payne for your comments and suggestions. I have incorporated many into this version. Lightened linear gradient , decreased flower exposure and luminosity along with a small crop of bottom.

Hi Mario. I am back to stay this time. For me you have picked the best f the comments and advices and your last version is really much improved. I try: why not changing the color of the sky that now is in competition with the beautiful flowers?