Early morning sun breaking over the rim of Yosemite valley, illuminating this ribbon of granite while a lone tree stands sentinel.
Any feedback welcomed.
Is this a composite: No
B&W conversion and light adjustments in LR.
Nice counterpoint to the rock. I also like the way the ribbon of lighter/sunlit rock echoes the clouds in the sky. You didn’t list your lens or anything so this might seem out of left field, but a bit of lens correction might enhance this image. Specifically taming some of the distortion created by a wide angle…I could be imagining things, but it looks that way to me. Also a little nudge with the transform tool might pull things upright a bit and make it even more intimidating. Just a thought. The tonal range looks good and the gray values lively. I also like that the top of the tree is in front of some clouds giving it even more prominence in the frame.
Ric, the visual balance of tree, rock wall, and clouds looks great and lets the tree be the star. One aspect of b&w is that the viewer can’t tell if the bright section on the wall is sunlight or just lighter rock…but it doesn’t matter. I like the small strip of grass at the bottom. I am wondering about the brighter sky, adjacent to the rock wall. Is that the lighting or did you dodge that area, I’m thinking that a bit of burning-in there would feel “more natural”.
Hi Kristen, thanks for the feedback. This was shot with a Canon 5D MIII and a 24-105 Canon L lens at 28mm, 1/80s at f22, ISO 800. I used the Upright Lens Correction feature in LR Classic to straighten up the tree but your eye is obviously picking up on the fact that this didn’t completely address the distortion. I’ll learn more about the transform tool.
Thanks for the feedback, Mark. I appreciate your take on the composition since I felt that was strong when I set up the shot. I didn’t do any dodging of specific areas in this image, only made universal changes to exposure, highlights, etc. I will try some burning in that area and see what I come up with.
No problem, @Ric_Federico - the transform tool is pretty powerful. I’ve been using it for years, but in a limited way. Recently I’ve started experimenting with the horizontal slider as well as the vertical slider to adjust geometry in shots. Sometimes it ends up looking crazy, but you can reset things and start over. I’ve even used some of the proportion scale adjustments, too. Interesting results.
Thanks, @Kris_Smith. I look forward to working with it more myself. This image was really my first experimentation with it.
