Critique Style Requested: In-depth
The photographer has shared comprehensive information about their intent and creative vision for this image. Please examine the details and offer feedback on how they can most effectively realize their vision.
Self Critique
I have adjusted this image to be optimized for printing. Whenever I do this kind of optimization, the photo always looks flat on my screen. I am wondering if I should make a separate version for online viewing?
Creative direction
This was a new location that I had never shot before. The previous day on a photo spot scouting trip we had found this spot and made plans to shoot the sunrise. Fall colors were nearing their peak and I wanted to capture the grandeur of Mt. Sneffels and the surrounding San Juan mountain range in a Gigapixel or more image.
Specific Feedback
Aesthetic, Conceptual, Emotional and Technical
Technical Details
This is an focus stacked & stitched image shot with a Canon R5, 300mm lens at f/11, 1/160th sec., ISO 400. It is made up of 2012 images with many of the images being Focus Bracketed images processed to yield 252 individual Focus Stacked images, 7 rows x 36 columns 30% overlap in portrait orientation. Preprocessing was done with Adobe Camera RAW, focus stacking was with Helicon Focus Pro. Focus stacked images were ran through Topaz Photo AI for de-noising and sharpening. Stitching was done using PTGui. Final post processing was done in Photoshop with TK Actions Soft Pop applied to the image.
The original image is: 4.35 Giga-pixels, 34,807 x 125,025 pixels, 116" x 417" 300 PPI (9 ft. 8in. X 34 ft., 9in.) un-cropped image size.
Description
Oct. 3, 2023. 7:30am. – The previous two days had been nearly steady rain. The overnight weather forecast had predicted snow down to 9000 ft. so we got up early and drove to this location on County Rd 5 that we had scouted out the day before. Hoping for fresh snow on the peaks the Good Lord didn’t disappoint us. The higher mountains were wearing a new coat of fresh powder snow. A dusting of snow remains on the evergreen trees near the tree line. Thankfully, it had not gotten too cold which would have caused the scrub oaks and Aspens to turn brown. As we were shooting we could hear an Elk bugle in the valley below us. As I was editing the photo I found him standing looking up towards me as if to say “I see you!”.