Another fall image from Davis, West Virginia area. Here we have Douglas Falls. You have to make a climb down a rocky bank to get to the water . Around 100 feet down so you have to earn this one. The look there is very interesting due to the runoff from the old coal mines in the area. The water is aqua in color and it colors the rocks red. The light was hitting just the falls and I like how the reflection in the water leads from the main fall to the mini fall in the foreground. Could not get back any further than I did.
Nikon D750 Nikon 24-120. ISO 100, F16, 1.3 seconds.
Andrew, the slight hint of Fall color is very very nice in the image. and the turqoise water has lots of potentials. Several thoughts come to mind. I think the edges and corners could be cleaned up. I do think the mini fall in the FG is quite interesting but the composition doesn’t quite deliver. As presented, the mini fall is too close to the bottom of the frame and appears like an afterthought. Since I have never been there, this could very well be impossible to be done safely (nature first!). As for the processing, is there a way to make the water pop a little more? I really like the contrast between the turquoise water and the red rock.
Andrew, I agree that reflection of the falls is really interesting, and is a great way to connect the foreground and the background. I think you have done a good job overall with your processing, although I agree with @Adhika_Lie I would like to see a little more pop or vibrance in the aqua water.
I think the composition is too complicated, and trying to do too much at once. I think this is a case where less would be more. As Adhika mentioned, there are some issues in the corners. The yellow foliage in the URC is not strong enough to add much here, rather it pulls your eye away from the falls. The LRC just has too much going on, the bright grey sliver is an eye magnet, and the small orange rock in the water above the big rock are both elements that are minor distractions to me.
The big rock in the LRC has a huge amount of visual weight in the composition, to the point where it crowds out the little falls in the LLC. I think this big rock should have less visual weight in the image. I also think the small falls in the LLC is very interesting, but it feels very cramped in the composition, I wish you had included more breathing room below it. The leaning tree in the ULC is also a bit of an eye magnet, i would clone it away.
I think a tighter crop would address some of these issues, i have done a suggested crop in the rework, and also cloned away the tree in the ULC.
This looks to be a target rich environment. The color contrast is most obvious and I can see why the desire to make an image at this location. In an effort to augment this feature, I agree with the others that removing that which distracts from this primary “subject” can be beneficial. So, increasing the darkness/saturation of the pool would help to embellish this finding while decreasing distracting elements in the corners as the others have said.
To carry this a bit further, one could consider unifying the colors of the rocks as the mixture of gray + red serves further to distract (@Ed_McGuirk was alluding to). Depending on your ethics, another approach to unifying the color pallet and further simplifying the scene would be to gently shift the hue of the silver/grey rocks toward the red that predominates and draws the eye. There are various ways to accomplish this including a simple HSL layer in Ps targeted with a color mask, or using a Selective Color tool under the Neutral tab - also using a color mask to localize this effect. This may be further than you’d like to go, but is an illustration on how to simplify the message and perhaps make the image easier to “read” by the viewer. I’d be interested in others thoughts on this.
I like what you’ve seen here and I think you did well to have the reflection connect the upper falls and the little cascade. I do agree though, that the cascade at the bottom is just a little cramped. From your description though sounds like you had some constraints. If anything I suppose you could have just tilted down a little more, sacrificing some of the top (assuming you didn’t have a wider focal length.)
I also like where Ed was going with the crop to simplify things a little bit. I think it could be taken even further and really emphasize the vertical flow and connecting reflection.
Regarding colors, I also agree that this could use a little pop, but at least for me I like color transitions in the rock. I don’t know what it looks like standing there, but if there’s red in those rocks as you described, I wouldn’t change that too much. I’m a bit ambivalent to the tree trunk UL - at least it’s not bright or distracting in that way.
Also, this looks a little soft - like there hasn’t been any web sharpening. At f/16 and you had to have had on a tripod, I would think this would be a little sharper.
Well, all the talk, I went ahead and gave this a shot. I took the crop a bit further to more of a vertical pano. Also cropped a little top and left. Did a CA-clone of the rock sticking in from the lower left edge. Also minor cloning in the UR tree branches. Boosted the color/contrast a bit with a LAB color adjusted layer. Lastly did some web sharpening. All a bit tough given the pretty small file, but I think the ideas come through.
