From my fall trip to West Virginia, taken at Blackwater Falls State Park. I was drawn to this small patch of leaves perched in this rushing waterfall.
Specific Feedback Requested
Is it too much of a 50/50 comp? I thought about cropping to a 5x4 to try to alleviate that some but I haven’t pulled the trigger yet.
A couple things I’ve worked on, not sure I’m happy with them though. Trying to avoid any hot patches in the water, there might still be one just to the left of the leaves. There is a dark patch in the URC that bothers me, I will either try to stretch it out of the frame or clone it out. I don’t want to crop it (unless I go to the 4x5) because then the leaves at the top get really close to the top of the frame. Is there enough detail in the water? I could probably darken it just a bit without darkening the image too much. The water was moving pretty quick so I had to shoot fast to avoid it turning to mush.
This is really nice, David. I would agree with you on cloning the URC. I like the comp as presented. I might play with saturating some blue in the water on left side but otherwise, the processing looks good to my eye.
Wonderful to see and frame this! It is unusual and so lovely!! I would try some low-opacity cloning in the UR. I love the ss for the water and the color and detail. Whites look OK to me. I’d be tempted to try some crop from the left, as much as halfway to the leaves, or maybe a gradient burn. The brighter tones there pull me away from the leaves.
We see a lot of waterfall images here at NPN that use wider angle views which show the entire falls. I really like seeing someone post a waterfall image that uses a longer focal length to extract an interesting portion of the falls. I think extraction shots can create more intimate, personal and unique perspectives of a waterfall. A lot more personal choice goes into what to include or exclude, and I find that a rewarding part of doing waterfall extraction shots.
I do not think it is too much of a 50/50 comp, it feels well balanced to me. Some rules are made to be broken, and I think you did so successfully here. I would not crop this at all, but as others have already suggested, I would suggest burning the left edge, and cloning the URC.
I tend to agree with you about the 50/50 light-dark composition. But for me at least, it’s those bright orange leaves that don’t work very well. I would shift them towards yellow and reduce the saturation. The water movement is well captured with an appropriate shutter speed. I would watch when I’m shooting waterfalls and part is sunlit while the other is in shadow. The water is white to begin with and then you add sunlight.
Thank you, I tried to clone it out and did some stretching to nudge it out of the frame. Hopefully it doesn’t look too forced.
I gave it a crack with some edits to darken the left 1/3 of the frame, interested in your thoughts!
Much appreciated! I find myself going after both when I get to a scene. For some reason, not exactly sure, but I tend to work from wide to telephoto, I wonder if others do the same…
Thanks for the comment. I took those to be a bit of the focal point or at least the anchor of the image so I did work on them quite a bit, in this rendition I have reduced the saturation which also darkened them down a touch.
David, I think @Igor_Doncov has an interesting comment about shifting the leaves from orange to yellow. Just for fun I gave it a try using LR HSL Hue, pushing orange hue slider to the right (more yellow). I kind of like what it does, it makes the leaves more lively looking I think. I tweaked only hue, and not saturation.
@Igor_Doncov@Ed_McGuirk I’m interested in what made you think that would work…it does and in fact it is actually closer to what the raw file looked like. Is this because of color theory with yellow and blue being complimentary colors? I went back to take a peek just to compare. When I started adding in mid-tone contrast, it really shifted the hue. I have seen it mess with the saturation but not the hue as obviously as it did in this case.
After initial raw edits:
The blue/yellow thing is a small part of it for me, but not the primary reason. Yellow and green are adjacent on the color wheel, so I think yellow pairs slightly better with the green moss than orange does. Orange and green goes, but not as well as yellow and green, which is a more harmonious combination, IMO. Yellow also is a brighter color than orange, which makes the leaves pop out a bit more (which I like). Igor may have a different perspective for why he suggested a shift to yellow, but those are the reasons I thought it might work.
Orange, for me, is a garish color. I have some orange flowers in my garden in Baja and they really shout at you. I didn’t feel this peaceful scene needed that. In reality, I didn’t feel your tide pool scene needed it either but here it is less appropriate due to the nature of the scene. I try to use colors and contrast that’s complementary to the subject matter. That’s just my point of view.
