It is no secret that i am a new photographer and like many i got sucked in by grand dramatic scenes. The more I read and observe others whose work I admire i see them doing more and more small placeless / timeless scenes. I thought perhaps i could start trying to pay attention to smaller details and capture smaller scenes.
This is my first attempt.
Do you like the time blend with some texture in the water? or is it better smoothed out?
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Do you think the composition works? if now do you propose a different crop? any advise on how i could have perhaps made it stronger in the field?
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
Any feedback is welcome
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
This is a focus stack image of 3 exposures
If you would like your image to be eligible for a feature on the NPN Instagram (@NaturePhotoNet), add the tag ‘ig’ and leave your Instagram username below.
If I was a new photographer, and the Canadian Rockies were essentially in my backyard, I would not be apologizing for shooting grand scenics. But that’s the great thing about places like Banff NP, they are rich in both grand scenics and small scenes. I prefer to shoot a mixture of both and grand and intimate, for more variety in my collection of images. However, this is an excellent first stab at an intimate landscape on your part.
I prefer the version with the smoothed out water, I think it creates a more calm and gentle feeling in the image (and is more consistent with the soft light in this scene). I think your processing looks spot on, the luminosity and texture in both the snow and the flowing water looks great. I think the composition works well, with a well defined foreground, midground, background.
My only suggested tweak is similar to your prior Canadian Rockies image, I wish there was more breathing room to the left of the middle boulder, it feels a bit tight. Again PS Add Canvas / Content Aware Fill could come to the rescue here if you don’t have the extra room in your raw files. In the field, I intentionally compose a bit wider than I really want, to leave myself latitude for cropping after analyzing the scene on my computer.
Thanks @Ed_McGuirk as usual very quick to lend a hand i appreciate that
and oh i am not apologizing just wanted to set the scene I still have lots of icons that i want to visit, experience and photograph for myself
Hi Aref, I agree with what Ed said about the smoother water being better and ideally having a bit more space on the left side. I took this into photoshop and burned the bottom brown underwater area and a bit of the top edge and I think that helped the overall look.
There’s a lot of interesting elements in this scene to me - the water moving over the rocks, the colorful water on the left, the ice hanging down off the center rocks, and even the underwater pebbles look compelling. Good job with finding those elements. However, I think this single frame tries to do too much at the same time. It’s hard to know how to improve the composition without being in the field, but unless you can make this many elements harmonize together (super tough to do), I think a stronger intimate composition would have fewer elements.
Furthermore, eyes are often drawn toward the brightest and most colorful things in an image. In this scene, the brightest thing is the snow on the rock right in the middle, and for me there isn’t a lot of interesting detail to explore there like there is the other parts of the image. The most colorful part of course is the water, but there isn’t a lot of it and the color doesn’t harmonize well with the brown (although teal and white alone would be nice).
So overall my advice for a small scene would be to compose with fewer elements and make sure that the eye is really drawn toward the most interesting parts.
I too am a sucker for the grand scene, and wish I had better skills at the small stuff. It’s always fun to play and learn though; kudos on expanding!
For sure the smoother water for me as well Aref. I think the edges of the ice on the foreground rocks are an essential element, and the sharp water of the first image competes with that.
A vote for the smoother water. I think this is a very nice image technically. I’m in agreement with the feeling of wanting more room on the left, and maybe on both sides. Instead of going in tighter, I’m wondering – did you possibly shoot a horizontal? That might mitigate the concern about the amount of white.
Thanks everyone for the feedback. To be honest besides picking the smooth water over the one with textured water (which was my opinion as well)
I am struggling with how to implement your feedback to make it better I considered cropping it to only show the rocks based on @Brent_Clark’s suggestion that there are many elements competing for attention here ; however i did not like it that way.
my take is that the lines kind of flow from top to bottom…is it only me who sees this?
unfortunately i have no more canvas (in the field i was trying to focus on what grabbed my attention and simplify) i am seeing now that did not work because i neither eliminated the water entirely nor did i include enough of it to make it was on the eye. (content aware fill was a pain on this one, could not create more pixels seamlessly)
and like many i got sucked in by grand dramatic scenes. The more I read and observe others whose work I admire i see them doing more and more small placeless / timeless scenes. I thought perhaps i could start trying to pay attention to smaller details and capture smaller scenes.
