Ice at the edge

Image Critiques Weekly Challenge
1

Ice at the edge
Ice at the edge1500Ă—1000 723 KB

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
2

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:

Johnjrs-07411A_1
Johnjrs-07411A_11500Ă—1000 780 KB

3

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.