I normally don’t do sunrises, too early, but I was persuaded to climb Stac Pollaidh last October. We climbed through low cloud nearly all the way and just when we thought it was all a waste this light came in for about 5 mins.
Any comments or suggested improvements most welcome.
Shot on Olympus OM1 Mk2 with my always on 12-100 f4
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
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I’m going to have to be straight up here and say, unfortunately, I am not a fan of this image as it stands. There are a number of elements that contribute to me saying that and I’ll try and address them for you.
COMPOSITION - I think can see why you added the red slope in the foreground to add depth to the image. For it to work in that way, it would need to be a lot more prominent. To almost draw you through the image. Almost like a sweep. In this instance the red is pretty dominant and I think it serves as a distraction; drawing the eye from the main subject in the scene.
As the composition is split 50:50 between land and sky, I think you need to take a decision. DO you want more land or more sky? Or a balance. I certainly feel that exculding the red foreground is a must and you have enough sky to play around with to find a balance, Also by excluding the red, you are shofting the visual weight. There is a lot going on in the right of the image. By cropping it in this fashion you introduce two subtle leading lins in the shot (see red lines I drew on)
In addition, I would keep an eye out for the interaction of elements with the edge of the frame. In the blue box it would have been better to keep the small peninsular of the edge and let the water of the lochan surround it. Similar in the green box. A little bit of separation here would add some depth and isolation of the main subject.
FILTERS - I am going to assume that you either used a ND grad filter in the field or applied one in post processing. When shooting mountains or scenes like this it is easy to tell when one has been used as the top of the mountain is darker than the surrounding landscape. The way the filter has been used in this instance has introduced the ‘dark mountain top’ and also introduced an expsoure inbalance between the sky and foreground.
PROCESSING - There is a predominant colour cast on the image. Forgive me here, but I cant tell if it’s from using a filter or something that was introduced in post? Magenta or puprle in colour. In general I think the image is too warm. I would suggest resetting the WB and choosing a neutral balance for this time of day. Somewhere around 5400k would probably do the trick and work from there. By having a similar cast overall in a shot like this, it can make the scene appear flatter than it is. I would aslo suggest adding some cool tones to the shadows and keeping the highlights warm. You can do this via split toning in LR. Just keep the statuartion values down to below 18 or so. This would also help address the hues and stauration in the foreground to be more brown/yellow than reddish.
Hope this helps and fire away if you have any questions
Hi Eugene I really appreciate the time and thought you have put into this critique. Its things like this that make me glad I joined this group. I was never really happy with this image but I think I persisted because I always felt that given the effort and the view, albeit very brief, I should have ended up with a better image.
I posted it on a couple of other forums and got nothing but praise which was as useful a chocolate teapot.
I have made changes in view of your excellent suggestions, why can’t I see these myself on some of my images. Don’t know!!
Altered image attached and thanks again Although I think I will give up on this and just stay with the memory, I think it’s sometimes better that way
Neil
I think we have all shot images like that where we saw something amazing and didn’t capture it the way i wanted. A couple of years ago I was out and there was an amazing sunset. Amazing colours, amazing cloud formations and shapes. I got a text from a friend who was on another mountain nearby saying ‘i hope ypu are out getting this’. Needless to say, every picture was a disaster, but the memory remains.
