Ice at the edge

The rivers here have only frozen over in the past day or two. Along the edges is ice like this, just a maze of crystals, formed, I believe, as water vapor in the soil below deposits. It was pretty special!

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 always am amazed to see the crystals of ice, which are usually hidden or transformed into ice with no obvious crystals. I put this in B&W and boosted the contrast considerably to take it to another planet!

Technical Details

Sony6000, 1/100, f/10, ISO200,200mm, with adjustments to contrast, tone curves, and sharpening in LR

2 Likes

Wow, that is very cool! Message-wise, it feels like energetic chaos. That one flatter piece is nice, as it give the eye a place to sit momentarily before roaming about the frame again.

Aesthetically, I could see boosting the contrast even more. I looked at the histogram and see that you have a full range of tones, but maybe a more “bimodal” distribution of tones would make it pop even more. Gave it a try, along with a very slight vignette around that central piece:

A very cool abstract of ice crystals, John. They do form some neat shapes and patterns. I think you could go all kinds of ways with the histogram on this one and all would be effective, if vastly different images. It’s one of those images that is a joy to play with.