Hi Bryan, I think your feeling that the image doesn’t quite work as presented is probably correct. But there are some good things going on here, so it can help to ask ourselves why!
In this case, I think what’s happened is you’ve recognized some very interesting subject matter, but haven’t distilled the composition down in a way that properly showcases it. The block of ice, the reflections in the water, the striped cliff face, and the shape of the cave opening are the most compelling elements to me. But three of four of them have fallen by the wayside with this composition: the relatively featureless and out of focus cave ceiling dominates, followed by the cave opening and then finally the variety of interesting stuff happening outside is relegated to a small area.
If your typical mode of operation is isolating elements with a longer lens, composing wide-angle scenes can feel foreign. Positioning and perspective become much more important, because every inch you move your camera can change the entire balance of the composition. In this case I think I would have tried stepping to the right and forward a bit, framing from an even lower perspective, so as to showcase more of what’s outside the cave and to see more of the underside of the ceiling (while ensuring it takes up less of the frame relative to the rest of the scene).
There are a couple ways you could improve the existing image. All those interesting elements are kind of jammed in the lower-left quadrant of the image, so a crop off the top and right (since those areas are relatively featureless and not important to the composition) can move the interesting elements to a more central position in the frame.
@Bonnie_Lampley is also correct that the triangle of lit snow in the upper left is distracting, so I would clone/heal/content-aware-fill that out after cropping. Some of the specks of dirt in the snow ceiling are pretty distracting as well, so I’d clone some of those out, without going all-out and making it look sterile/fake. In the realm of distractions, I would also vignette some of the brighter edges on the top, left, and bottom so as to draw attention more toward the outside and less to the out of focus problem areas.
Lastly, the color palette (brown to neutral white) doesn’t exactly evoke feelings of a cold landscape, so I would experiment with a cooler white balance to introduce some slight blues into the ice and snow, while maintaining some of the nice browns of the rock with increased saturation.
I’ve attached a version with some of these suggestions. I think it works better, but the out of focus areas in the foreground are still difficult to look past, and I would probably take this as a lesson on how to improve next time you find yourself in a similar situation. I hope this is helpful!
Side note: be careful in snow caves! They can kill when they collapse, so shoot them earlier in the season and in the morning when they’re coldest/strongest before the sun has been baking them all day.
