The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Surrounded by the darkness of thick clouds, I sensed a lightening in the distance. As I neared the edge of the fog bank, sunlight began to pour in from the east. It worked its way under the dense blanket and illuminated this aspen grove in a most magical way. The thin band of light streamed into the valley and began diluting the darkness. It brought with it the glimmer of hope for views of the distant peaks. Hope was realized later, but I did have to stop and enjoy this moment for a bit!
Specific Feedback
This is a crop of a pano shot with a 500mm lens. Does the softness in the foreground distract? I’m always open to any critique.
Technical Details
Nikon D850
Nikon 500mm f/4
ISO 200, f/8, 1/800sec
I’ve utilized several masks in Lightroom to enhance the Aspen grove and bring out some shadows in the background. This is a 2:3 crop of a pano comprised of 8 vertical images.
Hey Paul. I love light break situations like this. There are only a few little things. If it was your intent to center the image, you basically did it, but consider that the brightest part of the tree line is towards the right side of the frame. Cropping in from the left to move the brightest patch of trees more towards the bottom center of the frame would word for visual balance. I would not attempt to brighten the background hillside trees as they are extremely dark and brightening them would dilute the drama and introduce a lot of noise into your image. The very bottom of the frame is dark but not unrecoverable. Consider a linear grad from the masking panel and move the blacks to +100 to lighten and bring detail back to that area. And, of course, the low level fog adds to feel and drama to this image. And checking the edges of the frame, all good, but crop out the tree fragment at the bottom right side of the frame.
Thanks so much for taking the time to do this for us Tony. I appreciate it. Definitely not my intent to center the grove, either top to bottom or left to right. I’ve slid the crop over and up a bit and lightened the foreground a bit. I want don’t want the foreground too light so that it maintains the look of a shaft of light coming in from the left. I also lightened the background a bit as I noticed while doing this that the oval gradient mask I had done for the Aspens, had left a bit of a dome of lighter area on the background too. The full res version definitely looks better than the resized one uploaded for this site, but it also shows some of the softness from using that big ol’ 500mm. When we saw this fleeting light, we didn’t want to lose the moment, so we shot with a long lens instead of trying to drive closer to use a more standard landscape focal length! Thanks @Matt_Payne and @Bret_Edge for your replies too. Sounds like a consensus on this! Let me know what you think.
Hi Paul. While I agree with @mattpayne and @bretedge and @Tony_Sweet, just be careful to keep that contrast and overall mood in there! That’s what made you stop, that drama of light/dark, and sometimes processing it we can go a bit too far…I oughta know, I’ve done it many times haha. Still, the adjusted version looks very nice!
