The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
Layers Upon Layers
I spent a morning photographing Glacier Lilies covered in dewdrops and a winding forest road with a fantastic little stand of trees in the background. I was pretty thrilled with my wanderings as I drove back across Middle Creek Dam on Hyalite Reservoir. I looked off to my left and marveled at the way the wildfire smoke from Canada had created multiple layers in the landscape. Believe it or not, I almost did not stop! Then reality slapped me to attention and I realized I’d be a fool to not stop for this! I jumped out, captured a series of images to make into a panorama, and headed off for a short day at work. Now, as I sit in my office editing photos, I have completely lost interest in the flowers and winding roads and have enjoyed getting lost in this image. You might like to do the same! Zoom in and wander around a bit. The haze reveals ridges and hidden valleys that are not always apparent and then there’s the added bonus of the reflection. ’Twas a peaceful morning in the mountains.
Specific Feedback
Images like this are so symmetrical that I’m never sure exactly where to crop it. I’ll often crop a water reflection with more water than sky, but this one wouldn’t work that way. I’m always open to any critique.
Technical Details
Nikon D850
Nikon 70-300 f4.5-5.6
ISO 64, f/10, 1/400th sec, 70mm
12 vertical images merged in Lightroom Classic CC and cropped to 1:3
I didn’t even take the time to set up the tripod since I was partially blocking the road across the dam, so this was handheld.
What an outstanding image! Just a shear joy to sit and view, explore, marvel and appreciate!
Not a single thing I would even consider changing in this in my view, Paul! It’s just outstanding and magical!
Sure glad you stopped for a few shots to stitch together! Of course it sounds like you didn’t have a choice, like you were overtaken by the forces that be
Paul, the calm water, great reflections, overall blue tone and the many layers look great. Since it was a handheld pano, I can guess how much extra got cropped…food for thought, since I usually find myself trying to nearly fill the frame, even with panos on a tripod…
I got luck with a pretty level pan for handheld! It was 12 images with a lot of overlap. Here’s a screen shot of the original with the 1:3 crop overlay. I think I warped the boundary on the original posted image to fill the edges better.
WOW!! An outstanding example of atmospheric perspective, with a gorgeous composition. I’m so glad you listened to that little inner voice that is so easy to ignore.
I love the blue tint here. I think the crop is perfect – I could go on but I’ll just say 11/10.
Paul, there is not anything I would change either. The soft feeling in the image is excellent, colors are right on also, comp is terrific. You might want to run a noise removal program like LR Classic’s new Denise in the Detail panel. Make sure you are not over-denoising the image so you don’t lose the feeling you have created. Super image.
I might try that, but I think the main issue you’re probably seeing is that the full res JPEG is 80mbs and 24,411 pixels on the long side. I resized this to 2048 pixels on the long side to avoid compression. The full res version doesn’t apprear to have much noise, but I could be mistaken.
