I’ve worked on this image from the north of Norway the last weeks, tuning it a bit more during different days. I took this during sunrise on a nice morning while I was up there during a photography trip.
What technical feedback would you like if any?
Does the composition work? Is the image balanced, or does it seem to have a bit too much weight towards the right? The idea was that the mountains on the left would give enough countereweight, but I’ve been a bit in doubt when looking back at it sometimes.
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
I’m wondering what you think about the overall colors (sunlight on the mountain too yellow and saturated?).
Are the luminosities in the sky well balanced?
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
(If this is a composite, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)
D810 + 14-24 wih f/13 - 1/3 s - ISO 64 - 14 mm. Focus stacked by using 3 different focus points, 2 for the fg, one for the bg. Highlights in sky adjusted by double-processing the raw file of the background.
Edit: initial (wide angle?) distortion was removed, so the shed walls are straight.
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Ron, the light on that mountain is gorgeous. My eyes directly go there and it acts like a counter weight to the right side. However, the image does feel like it needs a good amount of CW rotation although the verticals on the house is indeed vertical. Most of it comes from the heavy foreground on the LR corner I think. Did you consider cropping the LR corner a bit? Another thing that I notice is on the far left side of the frame. It is minor and it is also perhaps natural, but it just draws my attention to it. There is a line that connects the reflection to the rock in the midground. And that line splits that rock in the midground into one side brighter than the other.
Beautiful reflection and light. I would agree with Adhika about wanting a bit of a CW rotation, even if it throws off the lines of the building. Otherwise, looks quite good to my eye.
This is some beautiful light you’ve captured, Ron. I think the strong feeling of needing a CW rotation is an optical illusion as the reflection seems to line up nicely. I think cropping a bit off the right side (perhaps 50% between the right edge of the water and the the frame edge) seems to lessen that tilted look. Processing looks spot-on.
@Adhika_Lie@Harley_Goldman@Dave_Dillemuth Thanks guys! I’ll play with the CW rotation and the LR corner. I always setup my camera level, so I also expect this is some sort of illusion, didn’t notice it on location. Better to rotate it a bit and tune the shed walls and reflection with a small warp afterwards.
The line in the rock is natural, I see what you mean Adhika. Can’t unsee it now I’ll selectively dodge and burn a bit there to make it less obvious!
Thanks again!
Beautiful scene with wonderful light Ron, and excellent processing on your part to showcase this light. It’s amazing to me how noticeable the tilt is once someone mentions it, but it is so hard to see while out shooting in the field. One thin I have to keep reminding myself while shooting is that standing bodies of water are often the best indicator of being level, things like building can distract you into thinking you are level when you are not.
I think both the original composition and @Igor_Doncov proposed alternate crop can work well. In the original the leading lines of the foreground rocks are prominent, and create depth that communicate the grand scale of this scene. In Igor’s crop, the shot becomes more about the reflection of the mountain to me. I think both ways work pretty, given how strong the light and color are in this scene.
@Igor_Doncov@Ed_McGuirk Thanks! I like where the crop takes the image too, I agree that it changes the focus on the reflections, but it works.
I think this whole rocky area here leans a bit to the left (the ocean is on the left here outside the frame), I have to check it some next time I’m there
But the house is level. The walls are straight up and down and the roof is horizontal. There is a slight tilt of the building to the right so raising the left might exaggerate that. Hard to say…
They were off a few degrees in the raw, which I blamed on wide angle distortion and I fixed that (put it in the notes now). But there is more going on I guess. The shed is not that close to the edge either… Maybe I screwed up my tripod placement, though I always have the digital leveler turned on on my LCD.
I’ll admit it is hard to tell if this image is level or not. So I Took it into Photoshop and dropped a grid on it. To my eye the roof of the building is level, and the shoreline to the immediate left of the building is level (this says to me the entire image is level). As @Ron_Jansen pointed out earlier, I think it’s the sloping rocks in the left half of the image that creates the optical illusion that the waterline is tilted, when in fact the image is level. So I retract my earlier comment, upon closer inspection this image does seem “level” in the technical sense, and Ron handled this right in the field. It’s a matter of personal taste if one still wants to correct the “tilt” caused by the rocks. This is a very minor point, I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that this is a wonderful image, but the “tilt” bothered me enough to dig deeper into it for my own peace of mind.
Thanks Ed! It bothered me too and it’s one of the reasons I posted it here… I like to have reflections lined up in my images, it’s after all the way we see them. But something still seemed off here, I still think it’s the curve in the rocks on the left that make it ‘hang’ towards that side.
Your image with the grid did show me that the reflection of the mountain is a bit too bright, especially in the shadows (which are brighter than the original mountain!), so I’ll fix those too, thanks!
I just wanted to add one other comment about tilting. A few years ago I left a comment on a grand canyon image that stated that it looked tilted to me. The response from the image maker was that there is a natural slope on the canyon plateau that is present and that the image display is correct in that it shows accurately what was there.
I strongly disagreed with that because I feel the sensibility of the image should reflect what’s in the image and not an accurate reflection of it compared to the planet’s center. I mean if you shoot of a man behind a driver’s wheel on a car driving uphill you don’t shoot the image at the correct angle. You shoot it perpendicular to his face. In this case you can’t get around the house unless you warp the image intentionally so the image visual tilt is maintained.
As you say, there are so many good things about this image that its almost a waste of time to devote to the tilt issue but I wanted to expand on the subject because of some of the ramifications of tilt repair. You just have to be real careful that everything else stays consistent.
@Igor_Doncov thanks for the further information! If an image shows a tilt that’s there, but it feels unbalanced and it can be compensated, in a good way, I would try it. Wasn’t sure where to take this one, but I’ve played a bit more and I think it’ll work and improve the end result.
Hi @Ron_Jansen, composition is balanced in my opinion, i like the leading lines from the bottom and top right. The peak with the glow balances the composition and reflections are good in my opinion. Regarding post processing, i think there are too many details in the shadows, i would vignette a little bit and decrease the shadows, but it’s a personal consideration, for me the image works well as is. Thanks for sharing.
Beautiful alpine scene and reflection image. You’ve handled the light and balance between sky and reflection beautifully.
I had the same impression on the rotation, but also believe it to be completely optical and simply the nature of the reflection and rock elements. I like your idea of a slight rotation then warping the building back to vertical. Minor, but could be effective.
No other nits or suggestions. I like Igor’s crop suggestion, but also am enjoying this very much as presented.
@masdamb@Lon_Overacker Thanks guys!
Massimo, I might try increasing the vignette that I applied. I played with it before, and it’s a tricky one Too much and it was too dark for me. I can play with it some more.
@Ron_Jansen I have found that there are times when the perspective needs to be forced to fool out eyes and our brain. There have been times when the camera was level but what was in the frame looked off. Sometimes an opposite shoreline in a reflection can curve causing the horizon to look out of level. It can be easily corrected by make the horizon level by making in unlevel. This scene is more complicated because of the straight and level ines of the shed.
My justification for transforming or warping an image is that the lens warps the scene, especially a wide angle lens. In severe cases I will go in and straighten things out a bit.
This is a case where the photo is so beautiful that it deserves a little extra processing magic. I took the liberty to do a little adjustment of your photo. I rotated it and then I adjusted the perspective to bring the walls of the shed back in line. I did a couple other minor tweaks before I did a slight crop. I also decided to make the rocks in the foreground stand out a bit more to fill that area to give that corner a bit more weight to support the scene above it.
This was a quick and dirty edit. It deserves a bit more attention to detail if it were to be edited this way. Thank you for allowing me to play with it.
I wish that I could have been there standing next to you when you took this photo.
Thanks @Gary_Randall , the north of Norway is full of beautiful scenes like this, I think you would enjoy it! I like the rework, and some of the things I had done too. I went ahead and rotated it a bit more, until it felt better balanced to me. Used the tip from above to crop some of the right. The main difference with your edit is the crop on the left. I kinda liked the line of the shadow on the left and kept it in.
I’ve uploaded my final version below. I must say I like it without the shadow on the left too. And I also like the suggested other crop further above, where it’s pure about the reflection. Oh decisions, decisions! I see what you did to the rocks below the water, and that works nice too, I still have them much darker…
I’ll selectively dodge and burn a bit there to make it less obvious!
This scene is more complicated because of the straight and level ines of the shed.
