View of the Hudson River from the first summit of Breakneck Ridge, one of my favorite hikes ever! It was a bright white sky overcast day so I thought it looked better in black and white.
Specific Feedback Requested
Anything
Technical Details
Is this a composite: No
Nikon D3400
ISO 250
70mm
f/4.5
1/1000
I know this shutter speed is totally ridiculous for landscape but Turkey Vultures are always flying by riding the thermals and I always want to be ready for them! I don’t have a tripod, I don’t know if I would want one until I have 2 cameras!
Vanessa, a great idea to convert to black and white to manage the overcast weather. The scene has nice depth and mood. If anything, the dark triangle of the lower left corner is a bit distracting to my eye which could be easily reduced by cropping in some from the left to more of a 4x5 aspect ratio. Thanks for sharing and welcome to NPN!
Hi Vanessa. Welcome to NPN. Enjoy the ride!
For me the composition of this image is strengthened by the X lines of the hills and river; that seems to give the eyes plenty of incentive to enjoy the scenery.
As it is, the image does not have a lot of contrast. Maybe that is what you wish, but your comments suggest some excitement at being there, so some more contrast might convey that better. You have many choices when using BW. Just wondering, how did you convert to BW?
In this revision, I only had the gray tones to work with, and you might have other options starting with colors. I brought out some details in the LL hill, so it is not a mass, I dodged and burned some areas of the hills to paint in some apparent texture. Same thing for the river. (I used the History Brush technique of Alister Benn for this … you might look it up.) The sky is quite large, and being the slightly brightest part of the image, attracts the viewer’s eye (eye magnet), I felt it was OK to crop it a bit; then I did somewhat the opposite and increased its exposure to let it contrast more with the most distant hill.
I like yuor gentle processing of contrast in this B&W conversion, it has a soft gentle mood. Vanessa, to me this image is about shapes, curves and lines, so to me showing more of the river, and less of the sky (along the lines of @Dick_Knudson’s rework), place more emphasis on the shapes and forms. i like @Adam_Bolyard suggestion to minimize the black hill in the lower left corner (LLC) , to me it had too much visual weight in the original.
Another outside the box idea would be to flip this horizontal, I like the flow better that way. Of course if this location is very recognizable, you can’t get away with doing that.
Thank you so much for taking the time to share this with me. I looked up that technique I’m not sure if what I have can do that. I have Pixelmator photo and I do everything on an iPad. I don’t have a computer. In case you wanted to see, this is the original, nothing done except for converting from raw to jpg and smaller size…
Wow! That kind of blows my mind at first because I used to see this view almost every day hiking up the Ridge. But the more I look at it the better it looks this way. That’s a really neat idea. Thanks for taking the time with me, I really appreciate it!
Hi Vanessa, nice image! Plus here on the color rendition. I’m trying to put my finger on it, but I think that the different blue hues moving from foreground to background add quite a bit to the atmospherics. There’s also the subtle hint of dark green.
Thanks, Dan! I’m glad you like it! Even though I know it’s not that spectacular of a scene and could have been done better it gives me hope!
You can say what you don’t like either. “Beat me up!”
The way the lines lead from right to converge on the left is very nice. Interesting to see the color; it’s almost a monochrome and I think it works well.
This scene reminds me of a lot of the views we get here in the Columbia River Gorge.
Haha! I always ask to be “beat up” as well. It’s like, what’s the point of asking for feedback, if you don’t get any insight that make you think differently? I personally liked the crop you did with the rework above that brought the two mountain ‘triangles’ in the LLC flush with the bottom of the frame. It looks like @Dick_Knudson gave some ideas on that composition. To my eye, that kind of had them pointing to that sweet leading line you have with the shore of the river which then led to the mountains in the distance with less of the sky.
That same crop but in color! My two cents - but I would keep the original orientation (not flipped). I like the way that it ‘reads’ in Ed’s horizontal flip. As he pointed out though, I think that if a viewer is familiar with that area of the Hudson they might recognize that the river is flowing the wrong way.
