I wanted to convey a sense of motion in the fog and clouds because they were moving pretty fast. And kind of a sense of mystery in the hidden forest. I tried different shutter speeds and liked this the best for what I could do as I had to stand in a ditch at an angle and since I had the lens out all the way and it’s hand held.
Specific Feedback Requested
I’m thinking there might be too much white on the upper/middle right and not enough shapes as the fog is so thick right there. But then again maybe it’s ok? Anything else.
Technical Details
Nikon D3400, with 70-300 lens. Had lens all the way out at a 450mm equivalent, f8, ISO 100, 1/320 Cropped about 1/4 or 1/3 I think, as this was the piece of the side of the hill I really wanted in my shot but I couldn’t get any closer. Adjusted exposure, highlights, contrast, black point, I think I adjusted white levels (because that feature is called levels and I used the white button and moved some sliders around) and a tiny adjustment in curves (I curved it up in the middle) My post processing equipment is an iPad and I use Pixelmator Photo for iPad.
Hey Vanessa - I’m very sorry that I missed this one yesterday!
I think for these kinds of scenes, in my experience, faster shutter speeds are actually better anyway - you lose too much of the fog’s texture with longer ones, so it becomes more difficult to avoid large swaths of featureless white and gray.
I think your suspicion of the right side lacking shapes is spot-on. There are some nice layers of trees on the left 2/3 of the frame, but it feels like they just hit a wall when they disappear and then we’re left with only the lower-right corner to latch onto, making the entire composition feel disjointed because there’s the big void between those two interesting areas.
I think a square crop focused mostly on the left side (with equal spacing between the leftmost and rightmost “floating” trees and the edges of the frame) actually fixes this issue almost completely. I would also try darkening the top half of the image to add a little more texture to that fog up there, and then I’d pull over (brighten) the white point on a levels layer to compensate for the image now being too dark and dingy. Fog is a delicate balance, because it’s not naturally contrasty and you want to preserve some of that inherent softness of luminosity and contrast.
I’ve tried the suggested changes below:
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Oh wow! Thanks @Alex_Noriega! It’s amazing how cropping it that way really makes a difference. And then just the slight adjustments. That’s really interesting about the shutter speed for moving fog. How it’s better if it’s faster, which at the time when I was seeing that in my photos on the camera, didn’t make sense. Thanks for taking the time to do this! It’s much appreciated!
I should be clear that it’s no hard and fast rule about the shutter speed, if the movement was right it could be better to slow it down on a tripod (for example, those nice photos from above the hills outside San Francisco that we see are quite graceful.) But if the shape of the hillsides and the movement aren’t that interesting, and it’s more about individual stands of trees, I usually like to maintain more texture in the fog and just shoot lots of frames as it moves, picking the best one later.
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Thanks for the tips and clarification @Alex_Noriega! Makes sense it would be different depending on the combination of elements. Again, I really appreciate your time for critiquing photos this week! It’s a great opportunity and I’m so glad that it’s been added to this site! And not just for me. It’s very educational to be able to read what you have to say about others images. Because it helps me to understand what to look for in composition and how to process to a certain degree even though I can’t do a workshop or one-on-one session at this time. It’s great!
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