Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.
Questions to guide your feedback
What is your initial reaction to this image? Do you like the canvas-like look of it?
Other Information
Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.
Image Description
I went to my favorite neighborhood park looking for signs of fall colors (it comes late in Texas when it happens). I knew I would need to focus on intimate scenes since fall foliage is very localized. This is not ICM. It is simply a reflection with a soft breeze on the lake waters. That created an ICM apparent effect. It also gave the image an impressionistic feel as if painted on a canvas. Do you see that?
Technical Details
The image was captured handheld: 1/500 sec at f/9.0, ISO 1000, focal length 81.2 mm, using a Lumix FZ2500 at 1:42 PM on a sunny day. There was a section above the water, but my composition was looking only for reflections. So, I cropped the portion above the water.
Specific Feedback
What emotional and visual feedback can you provide? Does the image convey any specific response to your eyes?
First impression - I love this! It looks like reflections of fall colors and birch trees in a pond or lake. Love the rainbow from orange to yellow to green. Don’t have anything I would change except maybe add a vignette? After reading your notes, I see that I was close.
This is a really cool image and I like it quite a bit. When viewed large it almost looks like a painting that was painted only with short horizontal brush strokes and on the whole it filled edge to edge with bright and happy colours. Nicely seen and very nicely done!
I love the glow you managed to pull out of the reflections, Egidio. It really does make it feel like a source of light instead of a reflection. The water ripples add some nice “fuzziness” to the composition and makes the colors blur into one another very well.
Egídio, this is a lovely reflection abstract. The range of colors is outstanding and they’re nicely distorted by the rippled water. The joyful “view into fall” makes this a scene that someone could look at over and over. The dark green area does feel a bit heavy, so some dodging would even out the viewing.
Water reflections are a ton of fun. This is a fine image Egidio! The impressionist feel really comes through with vibrant fall colors. May I suggest slightly desaturating the bright yellows? Just a bit so it doesn’t overpower the image.
I like it, and my first impression was that it was ICM. I do agree with Mark that the green area is a little unbalanced. Overall, perhaps a bit less saturation would improve the image, but honestly I’m not sure about that.
Roberta, I did add a slight vignette and tried to preserve the tones all around. Since the image is unevenly lit, I had to be careful not to make the corners unevenly darker because of the vignette.
Tom, the appearance of horizontal strokes is one aspect that drew me to this edit. I’m glad you noticed that.
Dennis and Diane, the water ripples really were just the right amount. Had there been a stronger wind, the image would not look the way it did. Diane, I loved the term you coined: IWM.
Mark, I lightened the greens on the image. Is that the hue you had in mind? It’s hard to adjust colors when each person sees them differently. The same goes for Alfredo’s suggestion. I toned down the yellow saturation. I must say that I do like the lighter and more pastel-like greens and yellows. Will, perhaps the lower saturation of greens and yellows reduced the overall saturation on the image.
Again, thanks to everyone who wrote their suggestions and kind comments.
Wonderful reflection-scape. Love all the colors. The wind-induced ripples have created just the right effects for a beautiful, natural abstract.
As I mentioned, love the colors. I can see comments about the darker greens and agree those could be tweaked to bring more in line with the luminosity of the other colors. I’m not sure what you did to address, but IMO, the darker greens are now almost washed out. I think you could have adjusted in ACR to lighten the luminosity of the greens without wasthing out - but again, not sure what you did. In the end, the adjustments needed are pretty small - and of course personal choice.
I actually quite like your original. Great job in seeing, framing and capturing this natural abstract.
I cannot agree with you more. Once I uploaded that second edit, I noticed how blah and washed out the image became. I left it sitting there and gave my eyes a rest before attempting to bring back the green luminosity in the original while at the same reducing the saturation. Please check out version 3. The greens on the right side are not as dull as in the second edit. They also seem to blend in more gradually with the greens/yellows in the center.
It will be wonderful to have my vision back after tomorrow’s surgery. For a month now, my right eye vision is useless because of its cataracts. I’m stubborn and continue to work on photography, but it is a very uphill climb.
Dennis, like you, I also like the first and third. The first is truer to the actual scene with the muddy and dark greens as they were reflected in the water. The third evens out the greens to match its luminosity to the other colors.
Thank you. It’s been a real challenge not seeing well for several weeks. Some days are harder than others. I’m glad the other eye has already been corrected – and that was 2.5 years ago!
Great job on the third version Egidio. The colors pop more than the second revision but flow better than the first. Wishing you a successful eye surgery!
Thanks to everyone for persevering and offering your valuable feedback. Also, thanks for the well wishes about my cataract surgery. It’s wonderful to see colors and images as they should be!
