Emerging leaf, falling rain

Image Critiques Weekly Challenge
1

Emerging leaf, Falling rain.jpg
Emerging leaf, Falling rain.jpg2000×1334 808 KB

Critique Style Requested: Standard

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

Description

On the last day of April, it was raining hard, a perfect opportunity to shoot a response for this week’s challenge. With raingear on by myself and my camera, I went to visit my pond. Even though the day was dark, the sky’s reflection in the water provided a high key, monochromatic look that I chose to enhance with the lily leaf just starting touching the surface.

Technical Details

R5, 100-400 @ 300, 1/125 s, f/14, iso 6400, tripod

1 Like
2

Hi Mark,
that looks really beautiful. Great that you decided to get out the door in these weather conditions.

You again nailed the shutter speed here. I love all those waves and ripples. And you’ve captured two perfect water drops. The amount of reflected sky is just perfect.

I was not sure about the dark ripple at the URC. So I hope you don’t mind that I downloaded your image and messed araound with it.

Emerging leaf, Falling rain Edit
Emerging leaf, Falling rain Edit2000×1334 1.4 MB

  1. I went for a cooler white balance (Temperature slider -5). It’s a sublte adjustment but it adds to the color separation slightly.
  2. I pushed the saturation of the yellow hue (+11) so that the yellow leaf stands out a little more.
  3. I used content-aware fill to ged rid of the dark ripple in the URC. Since my eye was a little too distracted by it.

I added your original image her so you can switch back and forth, because the temperature adjustment is quite subtle.

Emerging leaf, Falling rain
Emerging leaf, Falling rain2000×1334 808 KB

3

Nice! Isn’t it fun to have your own pond?

At first I thought this was a flooded road - the folded lily pad looked like a double yellow line in a road.

4

Mark, your pond(s) have provided you numerous photo opportunities over the years. This is really another fine example. The thumbnail had me taking a double take as I thought at first it was an errant stream of light. (Not to be confused with a light leak on a film camera… :laughing:) That lily leaf provided an excellent bit of difference or contrast to the rest of the otherwise all monochromatic scene… :sunglasses:

5

This is fantastic, Mark! This is one of those scenes that needs to be viewed large to really appreciate. I love all the ripples in the water; particularly the concentric ones; and the partially submerged lily pad adds a nice splash of color to the scene. Capturing those water drops added another wonderful element to this image. You have managed to capture some beautiful images from your pond over the years.