Saw a nice scene unfolding on this river, driving home from shooting the Milky Way. It’s a nice color shot, but I really liked how the B&W rendered the scene more ethereal.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Emotional: Feedback on the emotional impact and artistic value of the image.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
Our group got to this site just as the sun was coming through the trees. My first shot was Chipola Glory, posted earlier, then a series of other shots, emphasizing the natural glow of the early morning sunlight. This one, while a good color rendition, I found the color shots to be getting boring, thus did the conversion.
My question to the group concerns the light fade from the dark foreground to the lighter BG. This was a deliberate edit, so I need to know if it works for you.
Technical Details
Nikon Z7 II, 17-35 Tokina @ 22mm, f/7.1, ISO 250, 1/640.
Preliminary was in ACR for tonal control. I used PS with NIK SEP3 for the conversion to B&W, and TK to dodge and burn selective areas. This was only the second time I’d used the Z7 II.
Chris the B&W is very nice here. The dark to light you did works well too. It draws my eye through the scene. My eye zeroes in on the bridge in the distance. If that was what you wanted, then it works
Overall the B&W treatment is quite effective. Nicely done.
We recently had a discussion of the difficulty of critiquing an image where it’s difficult to figure out what it’s trying to say. Are you comparing the stump to the bridge? Is this an image about development vs nature? Or are you primarily interested in the tonal value richness and the actual subject is unimportant? It might help to know what you were after, what attracted you.
Actually, I think I know what you were after. It was those pointy projections vs the horizontal bridge. I like this image quite a bit. I modified it to what I interpret it to be. It might be useful if I’m in the ballpark. I actually like that dark cross thing on the left and decided to give it some weight in the image.
It’s a nice edit and reinterpretation but as I said in my response to David Bostick, I was far more interested in developing the depth of field in the foreground to comfortably lead the eye toward the bridge, but not so much as to lose the emphasis of the Cypress knees. The good thing about looking at a work from different perspectives is that it gives me the impetus to shoot a greater variety of compositions, next time out.
