Ed and I watched the foliage reports carefully and decided it was time to head to West Virginia for a couple days. We were rewarded with great conditions.
Blackwater Falls State Park, WV
Olympus EM5 MK2, 70mm, 1/20 @ f/16, ISO 200
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
I like the convergence feeling here directing attention to the rocky crag. The fall colour combined with the fog looks great.
I suppose there wasn’t a viewpoint without the top of the foreground tree?
The crop turned out really well for this one, Mike. I will have to go back and check mine as this is pretty close to what I was trying to capture that morning. Hopefully it is one of the sharp ones with the 80-200. The atmospherics with the mist are gorgeous and the autumn color is peak. For some reason those two evergreens in the FG do not bother me as much in yours as it did in mine. To bad we could not have moved a little more to the left. Anyway, beautifully done.
Michael, it looks like the perfect time there in WV. The diagonals are very nice, and I like the smattering of reds, oranges, yellows and greens, with a little bit of rock thrown in as well. The mist is a nice touch. The patch of mist in the upper left looks a little blown out, I’m not sure if you can bring back a little detail there.
Mike, peak color doesn’t get much better than this. I also love the composition you used here, the zig-zagging diagonals are just wonderful. And having the rock formation as the main subject makes for a more interesting image too. Is it possible to hike out onto that rock cliff? It looks like it would be a great spot to shoot from too.
I also think you made lemonade out of lemons with the way you used the intruding spruce trees as framing elements. My only suggestion in this regard would be to clone away the one disembodied spruce bow that’s in the URC (sort of).
My only other nitpick is a very subjective one, that is a matter of personal and creative choice. To me the color balance feels too red. Just for the heck of it I did a rework where I used PS Color Balance to reduce red (add cyan), and to increase yellow a bit. This may or may not be to your taste. I also cloned the spruce bough away.
Mike,
I like @Ed_McGuirk’s subtle tweaks as they have made an already outstanding image even better IMO. After looking at this I think I will work on my file from this location and see what I can come up with.
Strong warm autumn colors like this often easily trick Auto White Balance in our cameras. I’ve learned it pays off to play around with tweaking color using the PS Color Balance adjustment layer. Sometimes very small changes in a Color Balance slider make for huge changes in appearance.
Lovely colors Mike, and I like the suggestions in the comments above. The flow of the diagonals is eye catching, and those foreground trees actually fit to my eye because the mimic the ridge diagonal above.
The comp and fog make this a super image, I agree with @Ed_McGuirk’s recommendation and rework on adjusting the color.
