Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
Description
This was taken at the end of my first day at City of Rocks National Preserve in southern Idaho in 2009. By the next morning, our trailer was in 8 inches of new snow. I think that the old raw file responded pretty well to today’s processing tools.
Specific Feedback
Does this image make you want to put City Of Rocks on your list of destinations?
Technical Details
Digital Rebel with 28-105 @ 28mm. ISO 200 (pretty much the max for that camera)
This is a fine image with a lot of emotional impact. The composition is really good in my opinion. The dramatic sky provides much of the impact but for me the impressive part are the gnarly branches that enter from the sides and into the center. All those pale dead branches generate a lot of tension. Even the color pallete adds to the feeling. Overall, it’s a very cohesive image in what it says.
The problems I see are technical ones. The bare tree on the right is pale below the horizon and black above it. It looks as though the work done on the sky affected the tree as well. If thats the case it can be corrected by creating a luminosity mask on the sky rather than the quick selection tool prior to making sky adjustments. Actually it looks like you may have applied an exposure gradient.
Accurately perceived, my friend. I had a heccuva time with those branches for exactly the reason you cited.
Well I’d definitely like to go there. This reminds me very much of some of the areas around where I grew up on SE Arizona; I’d love to go back and photograph that area some day.
I agree that the main issue is the sky masking, and it sounds like you are getting after that. I find help sometimes by using a curves adjustment for the sky that has points added to the shadows to lock those values. That way when I adjust the highlights it doesn’t have such an impact on the darker areas.
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