I’ve felt that this photo is unremarkable - just a typical fall foliage reflection scene - however it received a lot of interest on 500px and was selected as a finalist in the Landscape Photography Magazine monthly Assignment: Autumn Visions. I’d like to understand why that might be from some of you who critique photos frequently.
Congrats on the selection, Robert. I think the symmetry works quite nicely here. My personal preference would be to tone down the saturation some. But that’s just me…although it could be that toning down the saturation would have pulled it from the finalist selection…
Either way, I like it.
Thanks for your comments, David. The degree of saturation certainly seems to be a personal preference; as it is, I only boosted saturation +12 in Lightroom since the colors were already naturally fairly saturated.
A nice reflection symmetry scene, Robert. As for your question about the popularity of the image on 500px.com; for many of us who go out and shoot landscapes and have been there, seen that it’s fairly obvious that the colors are exaggerated. A huge number of people in the world though, are not as fortunate to have personally witnessed nature scenes like this and don’t have the connection to reality so they don’t question it plus almost all photo viewers seem to respond very positively to brilliant colors and symmetry in general, thus the high ratings on 500px.com. My personal preference would be to see it in it’s natural tones as it would give me a better sense of presence (as if I was standing there viewing it myself).
This is a very interesting scene. There will always be a huge range of reactions to a scene, even here with a more experienced and sophisticated audience. @Gary_Minish accurately points out the factors that people will first react to, but the more experienced and serious photographers will go further and question how things could be better. That requires spending some time with an image, which many viewers won’t do. (Why question or second-guess something that struck a chord with you? And many of them won’t have a clue that there are tools to subtly improve images.)
For me, I do think the colors could be more subtle. How it looked initially in LR (or any raw converter) will vary hugely with the camera profile – a raw file is not an image until a profile is applied – before that it’s a string of 0s and1s. For my current camera there are 21 profiles in LR. And choosing and tweaking them is dependent on an accurate monitor, both in contrast and color profile. (Fortunately, these days that’s much less of a problem than in the last century.)
After profile choice, the balance of Temp and Tone in the raw file has the potential to bring out more color separation in the various tones. Saturation as such (the slider) is the last thing I would touch, and only after looking at color and tonal balance with all the other sliders and profiles, including a linear profile. And lowering Saturation can be the kiss of death for colors. It’s a slider I almost never use. After getting to PS, Selective Color is often the best place to do final tweaks to colors.
I also feel the composition is cramped – I’d like to have a little more breathing room top and bottom. But that’s another matter of taste.
Thanks for your comments. I’d like to know what you mean by the image’s “natural tones”. Every image needs to be developed to some degree from its RAW state. What a final image looks like is also based on to what degree the photographer is attempting to render an objective representation of the scene or an artistic interpretation. I would expect every member of this forum goes for the latter in most cases. The result could be subtle or dramatic. Neither is necessarily correct.
All good feedback, Diane, and a good summary of all the choices we need to make when developing our images. And those choices can depend on the purpose of the image - whether it’s for a postcard or a fine art print (for example). This one belongs in the postcard category, in my opinion.
