This was taken from a small plane over Iceland glacial river deposits. When first approaching these rivers with the sun in front of me, they looked like silver ribbons. But when we circled to place the sun behind us, the water became transparent, revealing these amazing ephemeral formations of sand and silt under the water. Eight hours of this and I still wanted more!
Specific Feedback Requested
I’m wondering about the color balance and the highlights. Also, this was not cropped. Do you think any crop would improve it? Is the orientation good? Suggestions for paper to print this on would also be greatly appreciated.
Technical Details
1/1000", f/5.6, 74mm, ISO 2000. Not cropped. Processed in lightroom basic panel (highlights, shadows, blacks, whites, texture, clarity, dehaze), brought down yellow and brought up red saturation, plus adjusting curve for black and white points.
Absolutely stunning! I love the colours and those diagonal lines. Also the warm colours of the land really work well with the cool blues in the water.
The balance looks good to me but I would crop a tiny bit off the left side to clean up that edge…
Hi Bill – I love these Icelandic river delta photos and this one feels different because of the mix of brilliant colors. I am sure it felt exciting to circle around and see such beautiful palette. Overall, I think this photo works well. I tried a few different crops but think this full presentation works the best. Depending on how you feel about cloning, you could consider cloning out the curving line about a third of the way up on the left side, along with some of the bits in that area. Some of those details are catching light in a way that is inconsistent with the rest of the frame and I think they are visually distracting. The lower left corner is the only part of the frame that doesn’t add a lot for me so I think some cloning to simplify could improve the photo if you are comfortable making those kinds of changes. If not, you could consider darkening the brightest highlights in that area to help them blend in a bit more. If you could do it all over again, an orientation that excluded the lower left corner could improve the composition (maybe? or you might miss out on too much of the beautiful flow) but I still think this presentation looks great. I also think you could back off the saturation a bit and still have a photograph with a lot of impact.
As for printing, I could see this looking really beautiful on a pearl or high gloss paper. Moab’s pearl paper or Canon’s Platinum Pro could both be good choices for high impact, saturated colors.
Sarah. Thanks for the thoughtful suggestions. Here is the image with some cloning and lowering saturation. And here is another image that has less of the empty reddish area to compare. Thanks for the suggestions for paper. I have some Canon Pt Pro I can try.!
