For my 70th birthday, I decided to hike up to the famous Old Man of Storr, an iconic rock formation located on the Isle of Skye in Scotland. Scottish weather can be quite unpredictable and the day say rain, fog, hail, and broken sunshine. Made it to the top before all the other tourists arrived. I capture several images but I thought this was one of the best , with the two hikers walking into the scene. the pointed rock formation to the right center of the trail is the Old Man of Storr.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Conceptual: Feedback on the message and story conveyed by the image.
Emotional: Feedback on the emotional impact and artistic value of the image.
Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
I’ve been tending at times to be so worried at blowing out highlights too much that I shot this too dark and had some effort to recover shadows, Maybe in too much of a rush to capture the images as the light was constantly changing as clouds move by. This was shot in manual mode, perhaps I should have shot in aperture priority. I worked hard to prevent ghoasting in the image, “What say Ye”.
Technical Details
Handheld 1/250 sec f/11 ISO 400 Single shot, processed in PS
Hi Gary, well, happy birthday. That’s an awesome present for yourself. I generally follow what you did with my landscape images–preserve the highlights. Today’s cameras can recover shadows very well, but if you blow a highlight, it’s gone for good.
I think you did a great job on this and I agree the hikers add a sense of scale and interest.
I wonder if there’s a balance between bringing up the shadows and still retaining some contrast. The cliffs feel a little flat…just a touch of contrast or clarity would probably help there.
Happy birthday again, Gary! Great to see that you’re fit enough to hike up the Old Man. I hope to reach the same age this year, and like you I always love to be in the outdoors. Don’t have this great landscape on my doorstep, unfortunately.
A beautiful image, and I like your processing. I agree with @David_Bostock 's comment about the rocks. I loaded your image in SNS-HDR Pro. I sometimes use this application to combine multiple exposures of a scene; there are several presets that give a good starting point for an HDR image without too much of the feared HDR look. If you load only 1 image, you can use the local contrast enhancement of the application. Then I selected the rocks only and blended the processed image in yours. How much change is a matter of taste.
By the way: your image seems to have a ProPhoto profile. This could lead to a different presentation on a display, dependent on the used internet browser. My image is sRGB.
Thanks for your insight, David. I guess that I am cautious about pushing the shadows too much, however, it shows that my Nikon Z7 is really good at capturing shadow detail.
Thank you for your comments, Hans. Scotland is an interesting and challenging place to shoot, totally different than Colorado and the the western US where I do most of my photography. Lots of clouds and rain when we were where in Scotland. I ended up with a variety of images many on the dark side.
Re the Pro Photo vs sRGB profile, I use PS export to prepare images for posting and it indicates they are being saved as sRGB /jpeg. I will take your suggestion and look further into this. thanks again.
Happy belated birthday! Quite a present for yourself!
Excellent composition and I think the hikers add a nice touch. Although I do wish there was some extra room at the foot of the bottom hiker. Not a huge deal though.
Love the greens and you were blessed with a semi-dramatic sky which also is a positive element. I may not have observed the contrast in the rocks if it weren’t mentioned, but after the fact, I really like Han’s rendition. The rock seems to have a bit more character and richness, if it’s possible that rocks can portray that…
Such a fascinating place. Thank you for sharing it with us.
I think that this looks quite good and I’m really glad you opted to shoot this composition and not the same typical view I’m always seeing from this place! I love the trail running through the frame and I like the inclusion of the two hikers although I do wish they were a tiny bit further down the trail and not on the very bottom of the frame. Oh, and that sky is fantastic and creates a really great mood for the image.
