The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic / Expressive
About This Image
Last Day of Summer
Morning mist held back the shore,
and sunlight found the turning leaves.
Beside me stood my grown-up child,
as once she stood, so small, beside me.
I raised the camera to hold the light,
the quiet water, the distant boat—
knowing some summers end like this:
beautiful because they cannot stay.
Feedback Requested
I wonder if I should have included move of the tree for a better composition.
I wanted to show more of the colours of the last days that just the turning leaves. The air that is colder than the water. The sky going bluer. Less light, the sunrise being later.
Technical Details
Camera: SONY DSC-HX80
Lens: 4.1-123.0 mm f/3.5-6.4
Focal length: 4mm
Shutter speed: 1/640s
Aperture: f/3.5
ISO: 80
This is wonderful capture and Glorious colours.
You did well to trap the sun behind the tree which helped the brightness levels throughout the image. The mist and boat really add to the atmosphere the image creates, and the lovely leading line sweep of the shore, gradually building in interest and pointillist style colours is really creative - fading into the lovely warm orange - love it.
You will have had some decisions to make as where to take your horizontal and vertical from - you seem to have chosen well with the top of the clouds. The tree and land is not horizontal and lean into the pic - it works well.
Yes a little more tree might have been nice - but not at the cost of a bright sun area midway up the right side.
Your crop otherwise is one I like a lot. You might have taken a 16:9 image at the time but I dont think you can get there from this image - it has to have been taken at the time.
Very tranquil Pieter. Your chosen vision for this shot is beautiful, but I feel losing the bottom of the tree trunk is distracting. Also, I don’t know if this is a landscape, or a shot of the boat. But I had trouble seeing the boat until I zoomed in. So I suggest a different version if you wish. Zoom in. like a lot–so you can clearly see that its a boat, with the distant land to the left balancing the branches of the tree, which will be to the right. Then the shot becomes about the boat, with all the supporting actors still there…Just a thought.
If I can steal a couple of words used already… tranquil and glorious. Quiet and peaceful come to mind and for me, I get the very distinct feeling I’ve had so many times in nature… the warmth and glow of that first light OR, the pending chill as the sun sets… either way, the light, mood and atmosphere at these times of the day are special. And you have the added bonus of the mist on the water and the highlighted leaves of late summer.
Huw brought up a couple of points that I thought I would and visualize. While originally I did not noice or care about the levelenss of the spit of land, I did incorporate a slight tweak in the crop below. Yeah, also cropped some off the top towards a more 16:9 ratio (although I don’t think necessarily an improvement, just an alternative.) But I do think the space in the UL sky is a little empty, so I cropped down a little. I also cloned out the old diagonal contrail remnant. In order to “level” that spit of land, I simply used the skew transformation from the ULC, which then promped the need to crop some off the top.
Anyway, just a wonderful and enlightening scene, captured beautifully.
Loveley poem by the way. If I get the connection… The end of summer is liken to your daughter growing up… summer has ended, as has her childhood. Very poignant.
This fits the theme nicely. The colors speak to the season change, as does the fog on the lake; it has a very fall feel and makes me think of the chill this time of year can have.
I like what the “floaters” add; they converge toward the center, and give an appealing flow into the image. I think @Lon_Overacker has great suggestions. Not a big deal, but that clump on the bottom edge feels cut off and you could play with removing it.
What a wonderful verse. Did you write it yourself. The image reminded me of my experiences in New Hampshire. To me it has a nostalgic look to it and the verse kind of supports that. The bright bush at the bottom pulls you down a bit [A1]. You could crop just above it.
