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
What is your emotion, feeling when you are on a spot like that?
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
I came across this shot from late summer last year. This is a place where I like to spend time, where my thoughts can flow free, my mind gets empty and where I recharge
Peaceful, exactly as your title suggests, is my initial thought. The tranquility of the water and dappled lighting work well together.
Feel free to throw in the rubbish bin, but I also like a beckoning version trying to draw the eye to that bright spot the water leads to (an alternative version, not suggestions for improvement):
I think your title is superbly apt, Ralf. A wonderful scene. There are two items that tend to nag at me. One is the little patch of sky reflection right at the bottom of the frame that tends to pull my eye and the other is the light colored patch of bushes half way back on the right side of the stream which tends to lock my eye to it-I think just a very slight reduction in luminosity on it would let the eye roam around the image more easily. The composition is wonderful.
Ralf, this looks very nicely quiet, inviting and contenplative. I agree with @John_Williams that removing the bright white sky reflection at the bottom is a good improvement. I’m also finding that the bright shrub to the right of center reduces my attention to the stream rounding the corner, so I’d suggest a subtle burning-in of that bright bush.
Here is a slight rework with your feedback and also a small crop on the top. The white sky on the right upper corner was also a bit disturbing. I put it here as it is about initial reaction. I really appreciate your feedback.
I´m still thinking also for a B/W version, but it is quite hard to make it in a good way and I´m still trying. It changes the mood
I like the new version, Ralf. I certainly understand about the black and white, particularly with the current tendency to want to use high contrast, it doesn’t do peaceful well.
Tranquility came to mind first. When I come across places like this I find I take a few shots, then put the camera down and just be in the moment. A lot of times when I am out shooting I tend to have ADHD and want to move around and shoot everything, these are the type of places that make me slow down and simply enjoy being there.
May only very small suggestion would be to crop off the right a little to eliminate the visible sky in the upper right corner, my eye seemed to drift off towards that corner since it is the brightest part of the image. With that gone, I seemed to just move around the image more. Excellent image Ralf!
