Shower Veil +repost

Image Critiques Landscape Critiques
1

This one’s a work in progress. I think most have experienced hitting the wall and have to step back from an image. I’m at that point. Need to figure out if it’s worth continuing.

Another cascade along the road in the Merced River canyon a few miles outside Yosemite. During Feb/Mar with all the rain we’ve had, water was just oozing out of the canyon walls.

Struggling with a couple things. One is the “bend” or otherwise verticalness of the falling water. I get when water shoots off a ledge above, there’s going to be a natural curve as the water falls. What do you think.

Also, I’m very curious as to your what your impression is, if all I will say is that I didn’t crop off the top. Want get a reaction there without saying anything else.

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You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.

What technical feedback would you like if any?

Feedback on processing welcome.

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

See my question above. How does this work for you. Any specific impressions?

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)

Nikon D800E, 28-300mm @170, f/18 .6s

In full disclosure, I did clone out/manipulate the LRC area to remove some green grasses that I felt were distracting.

Thanks for any and all comments, suggestions!

Edit:
Pretty consistent message about the top; the falling light, source of the light and the dark corner being somewhat distracting. I think @Ed_McGuirk proposed a great compromise. I did some slight cropping off the right and bottom. And for that upper corner, a combination of CA Cloning and some painting on one of the luminosity masks. Same goes for the WB. Still not sure I’m there, but think the cooler approach works with the additional contrast.

Thanks again! Research continues.

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Lon, this is pretty neat. Reminds me of the cave entrances I’ve seen. I wouldn’t be concerned about the natural deflection of the falling water. From what I can see there is so little of it as to be practically unnoticeable. However you bring up an interesting option about cropping. So happens that the little dark ledge top right tends to pull at my eye a bit, and a crop would take that out, however I think the brighter portion of water up there is appealing as it adds a gradient of light. If it were mine, I would probably do some judicious cloning to remove the dark ledge but keep the same aspect ratio and keep the brighter portions intact - just my thoughts. I’m guessing by the warm tones this was in the Wildcat Falls area?

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Lon, I’m surely not a Landscape person, so I’ll leave the real critiquing to your proteges.
I’ll just share my impressions- very cool image!
I think a slight crop of the bright area off the top would work.
To me, it’s more important that the falling water be vertical, rather than the BG. A bit more contrast might work too.
A tough image to process, for sure. Don’t give up on it!
Sandy

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Lon, I will not make a critique. I will give you my impression. I my eyes it’s not water, but rays of light pouring down. I love the colors in your beautiful image An image that set my imagination. As I live in the netherlands a waterfall is not very common to me.All here is very flat country site.
A small comment, I would have loved to see what was more at the top.
As always , great work Lon.

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Mt initial reaction was that this was a candidate for B&W, that the actual colors were kind of muddy and distracting. But then I “enlarged” it considerably (zoom), and the color did add something. I also think that many crops are possible that could simplify and focus the image more, but none to me are necessarily an improvement.

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A fine view, Mr. O. As far as the top crop, this one strikes me as a bit of a tweener. I find myself either wanting to see more of the bright light/water or have it cropped out and spend my time wandering the image in the lower area. Given this real estate, I would prefer a crop. Otherwise, the processing looks good to me.

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That was my impression as well. If that’s your intent than fine. But this lacks the sense that we are looking at something liquid. It doesn’t feel wet, something that you have conveyed in the past with glistening rocks.

Having said that I can understand your attachment towards it. The composition is rock solid. This is a fine intimate without the water but now there’s an extra veil we’re looking through. It’s really quite effective.

The longer I look at this the more I feel that the top should not be cropped. It’s the source of light. Lets take the bridal veil analogy. Would it look better on her if we removed it’s white crown?

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I wasn’t aware o the curvature when first viewing, and even after you talk about it, I’m having trouble seeing it. For me anyway, it’s a non-factor.

I tinkered a bit with screen crops, and for me anyway, cropping just enough to remove the ledge in the URC strengthens the image.

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Great image here! I enjoy the “abstract” nature of the image. I agree that cropping out the top-right ledge would improve the composition.

One thing I would do personally, is cool the white balance a bit. The water looks a bit “warm”. I don’t know what these scene looked like in person, but I feel that dropping the colour temperature may help in bringing out more colour contrast between the water and walls of the landscape, helping with a bit of seperation. I quickly did an edit with Snapseed on my phone, so result isn’t exactly what I wanted with the white balance, but I think it does represent the idea of trying to emphasize that colour contrast a bit. I included the crop idea too.

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Lon, this is beautiful. I love abstract study of a feature like this and I agree with Ben of the impression that this is rays of light pouring down. I actually love the slight curvature of the rock. It is as if the rock is hugging the waterfall. I am a little ambivalent about the small triangular rock on the UR corner. One thing I would probably play with is the color balance. There is a little bit of green tint that catches my eyes immediately. B&W came to mind but I soon decided that the warm tone is important to the image.

Thanks for sharing this. It’s a beautiful image to behold on my Sunday morning.

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Lon, I am coming late here, and you already have a ton of comments, so I am going to cherry pick the ones that resonate most with me. I like concept expressed by @Ben_van_der_Sande, about the water looking like light pouring down. I think this is what helps create the abstract feel to this image. And I agree with @Igor_Doncov, since the top is the source of the light, I would not crop any away from the top. If anything I would crop some away from the bottom to further accentuate the feeling of light pouring down from above. Like @Adhika_Lie, I am ambivalent about the triangular rock in the upper right corner, but I would deal with it via Content Aware Fill to avoid cropping it away. And I agree with @mark2 that cooling the white balance a bit would help. I would also add a little more contrast to make the shadows a little richer. Here is a rework that reflects all of my suggestions.

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This is wonderful, Lon. I am really enjoying the couple of tweaks that Ed made to the image. I just get the impression that I am taking a peak into a magical world as this is so inviting. Great eye to spot this beautiful intimate scene and it is definitely worth the work IMO. The little bit of curvature in the water along the edges does not bother me at all.

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Thank you so much for the comments and excellent feedback. I’ll post the rework in the original post to be able to compare.

Bill, you nailed it right out of the gate. The primary reason I left the dark upper corner in was because it’s what I think gives this a slight impression one is in a cave looking OUT - much like many behind the waterfall scenes that have been posted here. Having said that, if this wasn’t my image, I’d be suggesting the crop/clone of the upper corner too. It’s just a distraction.

Oh, and Bill, no, this is not part of Wildcat Falls. In fact, it’s the same scene as the first cascade image I posted a couple of weeks ago. This was a good sized cascade on the side of the road. But there were many distracting elements to get it all in one frame, so I broke it down in to smaller segments. And glad I did. This part of the cascade was directly above and fed the water in my first image.

Hey Ben, don’t sell youself short - that was an excellent “critique”! Excellent comments and impression.

Agree and I think goes along with Ed’s edit. Not sure how he accounted for and adjusted the upper corner, but it helped alleviate the need to completely crop. Thanks for you comment and observations Igor.

Thank you Mark. Amazing edit with a phone? I agree with the WB, which I was struggling with and finally just had to take a break and post.

@Ed_McGuirk - Thanks for the comment, suggestions and edit! You mentioned CA Clone - is that what you did? Certainly did a great job with that eliminating the top crop idea. I understand these are all low-rez edits so chalk some things up to that - for example, I think on your edit the shadows went a little dark. But contrast is worth shooting for and I love what you did up top. Thanks!

@Rick_Alway, @Harley_Goldman, @Hank_Pennington, @Adhika_Lie Thanks for your comments and suggestions as well!

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Lon, the edit I made was in Photoshop using “Content Aware Fill”. You make a selection of the triangular rock with the lasso tool, then go Edit / Content Aware Fill. PS then does its best to fill that area using the surrounding area as a guideline for texture, detail, luminosity, etc. In recent versions of PS, it even shows the sample area it is using as the guideline, and you can modify what area the Fill looks at.

What I have found is that even minor changes in the area you select can make a difference in how PS fills the area, so even if the first attempt looks funky, experiment with several selections until you get something you like.

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I think I prefer @Mark_Cillo Dumbleton’s rework. The repost whites seem pretty intense to me.