Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
With the light fading quickly I didn’t have much time to work on composition -in this rather complex image.
Balance of the tones
Canon Eos 5D with 70- 200lens 1/60 sec@ F16
James, You have a terrific photographic eye - great job of seeing and capturing these branches in the water. The light and colors are wonderful, striking at the FG and pastel moving up. Nice intimate landscape that makes a nice abstract even though it’s realistic. No nits here; just a couple minor thoughts: one, that you might crop the bottom just a tad (but it looks fine as is) two: that you might clone out the tiny spots in the water that are likely pieces of the branches. I noticed them when looking at the image large. I just think this would clean up and already excellent image. You should keep working with last light- well done.
I think the composition is stunning. I like the subject higher in the frame so cropping it would not work as well, Good eye(s).
What makes this very busy, but well composed image work is the fact there are no blocked up areas, which is somewhat rare on these types of images, and can happen quite easily with reeds and sticks like this. The first thing I look for on scenes like this is blocked up blacks (no good). There are two very small areas, one in each half of the scene, that are pitch black, but fortunately not deal breakers. There’s such a delicate feel to this image and there is enough separation and “openness,” to work. Very small blocked up black areas. The visual rhythm is outstanding, but consider another version, cropping so that only the right side is shown (maybe a square crop, cropping up from the bottom half way to the right most twigs. I especially like how the left half leans into the frame, pulling in the viewer. The color seems a bit off to me, especially at the top. If you added saturation and / or vibrance, that could be the culprit. Final thoughts. Consider dialing back the color to a more subtle level and consider cropping up from the botton to halfway to the right most graphic.
