Critique Style Requested: Initial Reaction
Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.
Questions to guide your feedback
Too tight?
Other Information
Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.
Image Description
The headland bluff, topped with krummholz trees in MacKerricher SP, CA. With wind-blown clouds overhead, all are reflected in the wet sand from receding waves.
Technical Details
Canon EOS 5D II; Canon EF 16-35mm @ 21mm; f/16 @ 1/20 sec, ISO 100; Gitzo tripod, RRS BH 55, Canon RS-80-N3 remote switch
Specific Feedback
Whatever you wish.
Hey Bob. What a cool place! I’m sure there are images to be had here with some searching. This one feels a bit disconnected, and yes a little tight, to me. I think the cut off tree on the right is causing that. I also am really drawn to the far left side of the image. I think it is for two reasons, the firs being that it is brighter, second it looks like there are some approaching waves which contrast with the rest of the scene. If it is possible to reshoot it and just focus on the trees and cliffs OR incorporate the broader scene. You may also consider going with a 4x5 or 5x7 to crop off some of the bottom. I don’t find the bottom to have much interest until you start getting into the colorful reflections. I think you are on to something here, a cool place for sure!
Thank you @David_Wallace for your illustrious criticism. You might be correct. That beach, north of Fort Bragg, California, is a site I never visited previously and have no plans to return. On that day I made a landscape/horizontal version also, but, unfortunately it suffers from the same deadly sins you pointed out that the vertical/portrait version does.
You can visit there yourself and make what you consider a worthy photograph.
