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Is it absolutely necessary to have a strong foreground item when shooting a large landscape?
Canon 5DM3, f/16, ISO 100, 1/80, on a tripod
This is beautiful, Kathy. Wonderful color palette and layering. I think your composition works pretty well as framed. Processing looks good but I could see adding a little vignette and/or burn near the bottom of the frame to help direct the eye more through the frame to the peaks.
Thank you, Dave. You answered the question I did such a poor job of asking:) which should have been: how do you direct the viewer through an image that has no obvious focal point. I’ll try your suggestion.
Beautiful light and scene, Kathy. I think Dave’s idea is a very good one. Real nice depth to this scene, too, I really like the many layers of light and geography.
I like the warm cool contrast, but the sky just seems to dark relative to the rest of the scene. With this much sun, shouldn’t the sky be brighter or at least with more contrast between sky and clouds?
I think all landscape photographers have experienced being intrigued by multiple elements in a scene: light, color, shapes, patterns, lines, etc. And if several of these are present it’s hard not to snap your shutter. My experience, though, is that if there isn’t some strong element that ties everything together I end up with basically a snapshot that just shows what was there, but fails to draw out an experience, feeling, “story” for the viewer. My hard drive is full of images that I’m hoping I can create something great out of with the right crop or other adjustment. My takeaway is to spend more time before I snap the shutter looking for the composition that ties all the elements together and takes advantage of the light or color that originally caught my eye. How often am I successful? Not nearly often enough!
Kathy, I like this image, the light, colors and textures in the foreground are wonderful. Where I pause a bit is regarding to where do you want to lead the viewers eye. In this image it’s the background mountain and clouds, but since they are in shade and darker, I don’t find them as visually interesting as the foreground. I think your composition works, but it would have been a stronger image if the mountain had some light on it. Not much you can do about that.
I had another idea, which is to create a panoramic crop, retaining just the sunlit area. A completely different spin, but something worth considering…
Thank you, Tony!
Thanks Rick. I think you nailed it.
Kathy,
Your title seems quite appropriate! And with that, you did an excellent job with the dynamic range. Although I would agree that the sky luminosity seems a little dark relative to the landscape. Then again, the angle of the sun is getting low, so you’re not to far off.
Love the light and shadow play in the landscape, including the dusting of snow. I would agree to an extent about a vignette and/or burning down the foreground ridge. I’d be careful though, not to also darken any further the shadows and higher contrast areas just above that foreground ridge.
Lon
