First photo (above) is a crop of the upper right of this photo of Mt. Sneffels
Critique Style Requested:Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This was my first visit to Colorado for fall color, and I was photographing the obligatory photo of Mt. Sneffels. I was drawn to the light in the upper right, but didn’t have the lens to narrow the photo down to it. I never edited the RAW until just now, after cropping away everything but the upper right. I much prefer the crop!
Specific Feedback
After the crop, I enlarged the photo using the Enhance feature (4X) in Photoshop which created resolution which mimicked the whole original photo, and then edited it using the usual, contrast, color, saturation, sharpening, etc., routinue in Photoshop. Two questions: first, should I crop away some of the sky because the lighter part in the upper left/center might draw the eye away from the light show in the center of the photo? Second, does the resolution look OK to you? It does to me, but I’d love opinions about these two questions, and of course any other comments you might have.
Technical Details
Taken 2017, Canon 5D IV, EF70-200 L lens at 144mm, f/16, 0.3 sec, ISO 100
Critique Template
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Great color and light mix, and I really like the intersecting diagonals.
My longest lens currently is a 200 as well, and it’s not rare that I wish I had better reach.
I think this is pretty good as is, but I can understand why you’re asking. I played with cropping, but think I like your version as posted better. I suppose another option would be to fill that in.
Hi Tony,
The resolution looks good to me as well and the cropped version is definitely the way to go with this lovely image. The sky is certainly colorful and amazing. I also am enjoying the diagonals of the snow covered mountain ridge lines. Quite the scene for sure. My only suggestion would be to crop or clone out that bright area about mid way along the right edge of the frame as it does catch my eye. Nicely done.
I understand why you’d hone in on the color/light in the upper right, but for me, the composition of the crop just doesn’t quite work. The full image though, is beautiful. The kiss of light immediately sucks me in and then my eye begins to wander throughout the image. If it were mine, I’d increase the white point in the lower half, make the shadows a touch darker and possibly very slightly increase clarity. Finally, the foliage at the bottom of the frame obviously has some nice color and I’d lighten the lightest areas and add a touch of saturation. Compositionally, the uncropped version is perfect, IMHO.
