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Self Critique
This is one of the classic views of Mt Shasta, but it never ceases to amaze me.
What I like:
Road leads eye to mountain along with lush green tree line
Amazing atmospheric conditions with pink clouds above and stripe of cloud splitting mountain to blue cast below
Strong subject of Mt Shasta.
What I struggled with:
There was a pinkish-magenta cast on everything (from the light.) I dialed that back in the foreground because I felt the camera picked up too much of that.
Had a difficult time balancing the sky/mountain areas above vs below the cloud stripe while preserving detail in the mountain.
Uneven tree line??
Creative direction
When you step out of your car and you are bathed in this type of light that covers everything it is pretty impressive. I wanted to bring that back in this photo, while not blowing everything out with a color cast. I am fairly happy with the coloring in the foreground…I still see some magenta/red in the trees grass which is how it was more or less. I have considered bringing the color up in the sky as it had more when I was there, but I like the sky balance I have achieved here.
Fuji X-T5 Fuji 70-300 lens Shot at 101.6mm
f7.1 1/125s ISO 1250
Description
On the way to McArthur Falls in N Calif…this…another car stopper. Wanted to be to McArthur Falls early but I had to change my plan. Cold morning, had to watch for traffic which was sparse but did move fast. Tried 3-4 spots for pre-composition, settled on this.
Critique Template
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I love views like this, where a straight road leads out to an impressive view. You certainly had some incredible color and conditions! I do wish the trees were a little more uniform in height on both sides as it feels a little heavy on the right, especially since those trees are not only taller but also have more dark shadows. Tonalities all look good and colors are realistic. You did a good job balancing the magenta in the sky with the foreground colors. I might be tempted to desaturate the blues in the road a bit. Overall, a fantastic image!
Hey James, I have been by Mt. Shasta a number of times but have never seen it from this location or in conditions as spectacular as you captured! My father and I tried to climb it when I was 12 but alas we got turned around by fog at Helen Lake!
Grand comes to mind and I love the leading line the road makes! I don’t see anything better you could have done with the composition, it really shows off this majestic mountain in beautiful light! You really caught it at the right moment!
Looking at the colors and light I see a bit of a battle between the cool shade and the bright sunlight on the top of the mountain and sky. I played with it a bit in LR with a couple of masks to adjust white balance, add some light in the foreground/trees, reduce saturation a tad, and do some noise reduction (at 100% the jpeg was a bit gritty). My adjustments may be off since I was not there and did not see it the way you saw it but just thought I would show this version as a comparison.
For this reason, I don’t use global sharpening at all in LR and set it for 0 and then do all of my sharpening locally in PS.
I would be inclined to crop off some of each side as I feel the trees are not adding much here, and the bleed into the horizon at top right draws my eye up in there.
While the road is useful as a leading line, I find road photos like this to be super cliche - probably personal taste but I’ve seen about 30,000 images similar to this using a road this way. I understand you were driving and so there’s not really anything you could have done but in landscape photography I greatly prefer using only natural elements - again - this is a personal preference.
I think there might be a magenta cast - if you duplicate the layer in PS and apply an average blur, you can see what I mean:
Very very helpful insights. Explains much of the difficulty I was having editing this. The sharpening tip is a good new insight to me. And this location I have seen before in photos…cliche yes definitely. When it falls in your lap…take the photo. Learned a lot here. Glad I submitted this photo. Thanks Matt.
Thanks Brett. All of those pluses and minuses I have been feeling too about the photo.
It was one of those times when you can see the light is changing and you look up from the camera thinking “where else could i possibly move to?”
Thanks Keith. I am really appreciating peoples feedback on this one. Learning quite a bit , which was my intent. I like what you did with the light on the trees. This was on highway 89 going from Mt Lassen towards Shasta.
Wow, who wouldn’t have stopped to take in this awesome sight. I love the leading line of the road, the majestic snow capped Mt. Shasta, the rig of fog hugging the ground and providing a layer and the trees along the highway. I can image being there and seeing this unfold in front of me and being overwhelmed by it.
The trees along the edge of both sides of the frame are not ideal, particularly the right hand side where they take you out of the scene and there is more weight on the right side of the image so balance becomes an issue. You could play around with cropping this but I’m not sure there are any ideal crops without affecting the balance. I get a sense of some color issues mostly by looking at the road which is very blue. Also, the low hanging clouds ae very blue and that may have actually been the case so take that for what it’s worth. I also find the saturation a bit high along the road where the grasses are and into the trees as well. I did a quick rework for you to show you what I mean. Hope that’s ok.
Thanks David. I am always interested in other peoples insights and what they observe in an image. This image was a challenge because the color cast from the sky was everywhere…trees, road, grass . It was unreal. I mean not just the camera seeing it, my eyes too. It did calm down. I appreciate your quick rework and observations.
I am gathering all of the input from people and will be editing a copy (or copies) of the original from scratch which should improve my edit workflow and skills. Should be interesting.
