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Questions to guide your feedback
Getting a good balance between the color of the sky and the water has challenged me. What else can I do toward getting a better balance?
Other Information
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Image Description
A view from the first ferry leaving Friday Harbor, WA. The fog bank was finally breaking at 10:20 am so we could be on our way.
Technical Details
D500, 24-120 @85mm, f/14, 1/2000, ISO 320 +.33 EV
I wanted the background trees to be sharply focused without having too much blur on the fog, hence the high shutter speed.
Processed in ACR for general balance, then photoshop for crop and initial color balance. I used TK9 for toning down a predominate blue color cast and the TK Lights adjustment to give more tonal acuity to the mid range hills against a sky still sporting some distinctive misty fog.
Specific Feedback
I would like some feedback on both the aesthetic and technical qualities of the image.
Critique Template
Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.
Beautiful image! I really like the blue colors contrasted with the black rocks and the white fog. My eye goes up through the foreground to the bright spot between the rocks and then into the layers of hills/mountains in the background. The color of the sky is also very nice. Well done!
Very nice. The fog, the mountains in the distance with the aerial perspective. At first glance I thought that there was a bit too much sea, but no, it is just right.
Beautiful image.
I love it, both technically and aesthetically!! The distant landforms are beautifully sharply defined and the fog nicely ethereal. The colors look fine to me. The sky looks a bit low in contrast, with the clouds. There are noticeable halos at the horizon lines – a frustrating result of some of the subtle tonal separations.
Having gone back to the RAW file, these are not halos but rather parts of fog banks in the valleys behind the hills. It drove me bananas to the point of going back step by step in my history log to see where they first appeared before realizing they were there all along. The sky is definitely lacking in contrast but adding a b/c adjustment layer didn’t really help. Any suggestions?
Hard to understand how the halos got there but they just don’t fit with being parts of fog. Maybe the initial color profile or some sort of correction in Calibration that got overlooked? Mostly visible at the edge of the darkest hills.
That aside, I adjusted the sky by selecting it (quite a trick, with the tonal overlap with the distant mountains) and did a curves and just pulled the white end left.
For me there is too much visual weight in the upper half of the image. I added more sky and removed some water and did a gradient burn at the bottom.
The embedded profile is a monitor profile – no idea how much that is affecting colors and tonalities. This one is in sRGB.
Chris, it’s a very inviting scene with the low fog bank nicely emphasized and a fine series of ridges. The fact that the halos in the middle ground follow the ridges and that the strength of the halos depend on the brightness difference between the ridge and what’s above the ridge makes me think that part of your initial processing was pushing clarity. I also think that the sky in the left 1/3 rd is a bit too dark. A somewhat brighter sky would look good, differentiating the sky’s color from the water color.
