I really dislike the sun flare on the left side of the photo. Does it look that way due to my lens? I am using a cheaper prime lens.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
I’m curious whether the composition is strong. My goal was to use the boulder and rock slab as the foreground element. Perhaps getting lower or higher would be better?
Also, I find i’m never satisfied with my post processing. I use lightroom to edit. Are there techniques that could improve this photo? Ive started to look into luminance masks in photoshop.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
I used three exposures and blended them together in lightroom.
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I think you made a strong effort here. I agree that the flare is distracting, and yes, that is lens flare. I would take this into Photo Shop and carefully clone the flare streaks out.
I think the light on the foreground slab is very nice. Since most of the nice light is on the left, I suggest a crop just to the right of the dark tree. This will help balance and simplify the composition, I believe.
Luminosity masks are very handy, and I use them quite often. It’s a very good idea to look at some tutorials and experiment with them.
We hope to see you become a full member, and look forward to seeing more of your work.
-P
Welcome to NPN! Great to have you here and thanks for sharing your first image post.
Yeah, lens flare is quite annoying. Hard to say if a direct result of your lens - I’d say most any lens is going to produce flare - most especially in the corners and right near the edge of the lens. Now I haven’t had much success with this, but you might give it a try some time. Some folks will take a secondary exposure and cover the sun with their thumb, or some small thing to block the direct sun - then blend later those parts of the image without the flare. Hope that makes sense.
As far as this image goes, I would just accept the flare - you’re pointed directly in to the sun - a pretty dang powerful source of light…
I’m not a LR guy so not sure I can help with the processing. However, I will say that I think the colors are a little on the blue/purple side. Yes, late, warm light and the reds from the sun will move the blues towards purple. The second observation is the bright sky. I think you did pretty well handling it all, but I think there’s room to drop the brightness in the sky and reduce some of the blue out in the valley’s, mountains.
I think the composition is strong and you did well to utilize the slab and the interesting rock formation. I gather though, it’s the grand view that you were enjoying and wanting to capture - adding a nice foreground element to top things off. I think you succeeded pretty well.
Here’s an alternate for example. I neutralized the WB a little and reduced the blue/cyan saturation globally. I used a luminosity mask on a broad midtones selection and reduced the bright values - and then masked them just for the sky. I also burned the sky a bit. While still bright (we’re looking directly towards the sun on a cloudless day…) but now there is a least a little color separation and even the sun is a little better defined.
Lastly I cropped just a bit off the bottom. Not sure if that helps, but I kinda liked the more narrow format given the grand view.
I think you did very well given the light conditions, time of day, etc.
Welcome to NPN. If you want feedback we will give it to you.
I am @Lon_Overacker’s echo on this post. I think he did exactly what this image needed. As far as the flare, yeah pointing directly into the sun will do that. Not many lenses, if at all could not flare. At the same time when we look into the sun, not that we should, but when we do, we always wince, and I think a flare in a photo like this is reminiscent of wincing at the sun. So even though it is there, I am ok with it.
I work in PS and I use luminosity masks quite a bit. Definitely worth the time to learn how to use them if you are serious about making your image the best they can be.
Welcome and hope you become a regular around here.
Drew, also welcome to NPN, I think you will find that you will get a lot of constructive comments here. I too agree with @Lon_Overacker comments on processing and composition, so I will instead address the sun flare issue.
Flare is almost impossible to avoid when shooting into the sun. If you can get the sun when it first cracks the horizon, flare is minimized. If you can partially block the sun with a tree, that reduces flare too. When shooting into the sun, remove all filters, such as a polarizing filter, extra layers of glass can increase flare, and a polarizer adds no polarization when shooting straight into the sun anyways, it is most effective on side-lit scenes. You can try to clone flare away, but usually this is not easy to do, depending on where the flare is in the image.
And then there is the technique known as “Giving Flare the Finger”, which is both literally and figuratively what you can do to eliminate flare. This requires taking multiple brackets in the field, and combining them later in Photoshop using layer masks. You need to take a minimum of 2 brackets, one exposed for the sky, and one exposed for the land, but in this shot you place your finger over the sun during the exposure. I use my my index finger, but you can use other fingers too
What this does is mostly or completely eliminate the flare in the second image, which you then combine with the sky image in Photoshop. Here is an example of the technique using my own images.
Thanks for this critique! I really appreciate you elaborating on the things I did right as well as wrong. I tend to struggle with proper white balance. Seeing your corrected image really shows how blue/purple mine is. Thank you again! Your advice is extremely helpful.
You are welcome. This involves using layer masks in Photoshop, and as @Youssef_Ismail indicated in his comments, the use of luminosity masks and Photoshop can take you to another level of processing capabilities. If you are serious about improving your landscape images, it’s worth investing the time to learn Photoshop and luminosity masks.
Welcome to NPN Drew. I think the composition works well. You received some very good advice from the others in this thread. Look forward to seeing more of your work.
