This is an image captured in 2018. It was my second year in photography and was extremely excited about visiting Scotland. I spent a lot of time driving the back roads. This day the weather was typical Scottish and I simply had too much fun pulling of the road and capturing scenes like this.
Specific Feedback Requested
Would love your opinion on the composition and editing and what you would do differently.
Technical Details
This picture was only recently edited using LR and TK8. Captured on the Nikon D7200 with the Sigma 17-50mm f2.8. EXIF: f8, ISO 800, 1/500 sec, 46mm.
How’s it going man?!!? I do apologize for the delayed response on you image. I wanted to spend a little more time with this image as there’s some things that I would like to point out with the composition. Let’s get to it.
I will say that I am having some trouble with finding the “star” of the show here. Is it the farm, is it the row of trees? What do you want the focus of your scene to be? As it is captured now, we’ll say the farm, as it is the the brightest area of the landscape and it is in the middle of the frame. The batch of trees to the right do hold strong visual interest, but there’s noting on the left side of the frame to balance those trees out. Right now the farm and batch of trees are competing with each other. With the farm in the center of the frame, I would like to see the rooftop(the pillars on the roof) either above or below the distance hills. Those pillars are just barely above the hill just making it a slight distraction.
You have nice layers in the scene, but once you get to the background the balance gets thrown off as the distance hills go from large to small(left to right) and again, nothing to balance those hills out. In the foreground, you have dark patches in the grass that look almost black. The light is even here, so there shouldn’t be any dark areas in the landscape like this. Simple dodging would even the grass out, and make it look and feel more natural.
Overall the processing is fine, and isn’t really the issue. But with this composition I feel the scene was captured too wide. Theres a lot of foreground, there’s a lot of sky, and competing elements in a big scene that doesn’t give the image good balance. You have a lot of dead space here, and I think this really comes down to in the field practices. I know you mentioned this was taken early in your journey, but with a big landscape like this, I would focus on compressing the scene as much as possible by using some type of telephoto lens in the focal range of 100mm - 400mm and possibly tighter depending on the subject.
Thank you @David_Thompson for your honest review. I have to agree with you on your points. Even though its an early image, I can see myself making those mistakes again. Your review is definitely parked in my memory bank. I do own a 100-400mm and it has become a favorite of mine for landscape pictures. Thank you kindly David.
