Just got back from 3 days on the western shore of Lake Superior in Minnesota.
Damn it was warm. At least most of the time. It got to almost 40 degrees with a lot of bluebird skies so the snow was melting. What little ice on Superior was melting. The shore ice was melting. Absolutely nuts. The coldest temps were this morning at a mere 10 degrees F.
So it wasn’t that cold. Still we had some ice and I really liked this view at Tettegouche State Park. We couldn’t buy a cloud deck at any price, so the sky was a complete blank. All the better to crouch down in the frozen boulders and see what was at hand.
Type of Critique Requested
Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.
Technical: Feedback on the technical aspects of the image, such as exposure, color, focus and reproduction of colors and details, post-processing, and print quality.
Specific Feedback and Self-Critique
I like the cold factor here and hope it conveys even though the water in the immediate foreground would ordinarily be ice.
Technical Details
Handheld with spikes on boots for grippiness.
Lr for basic processing including a crop to cut out some blank sky, the usual S-curve and some work in Calibration and HSL to manage the colors in the sky and the ice. Topaz Denoise to bring that down a touch and pull up some detail. Photoshop for work in the TK8 panel to isolate dodge and burning efforts to specific luminosities. Also ran a clarity action and confined it to the mid tones.
Excellent Composition, Kris. I love how the water fills the bowl evenly on each side. the ice is rough is some areas while smooth in others. The time of day was well thought-out as the light is shining just enough. It looks very cold yet the water is nice and fresh looking. I am not sure what other updates you can do here.
Beautiful Kris! Love the colors in the sky - great job processing this one.
Amazing job with the depth of field, great detail front to back.
I read your comments and description, but there’s nothing here that tells me anything other than this looks freezing cold! The other impression I got was the main ice-covered feature looks like a floating frozen barge of ice… Very cool - literally!
No nits or suggestions! Looking forward to more from your trip.
Thanks @Dean_Salman & @Lon_Overacker - I wasn’t sure how to go about photographing those boulders and dithered around on top of big piles of frozen rocks for a while before deciding on this framing approach. Glad it worked since there wasn’t a whole lot else that would have. That’s the biggest challenge with Superior, Michigan and the other great lakes - finding foreground elements and trying to balance the visual weight of the shoreline with the vastness of the water. This part of Superior has a lot of cliffs and again, the weight is all there with the cliff pointing out into a photographic nothingness. You’ll see what I mean as I get through these images. I think I’ve got 6 or 8 that work well. We shall see.
The cold factor definitely comes through. At first, I thought this might be from Iceland or the Arctic. I love the composition and contrasting cool and warm colors. My eye is drawn to the isolated rock/ice that seems almost to be floating and then moves up to the warm horizon and back down. If that was your intent, you succeeded. On the technicals I don’t have much to offer, its nicely done!
Very nicely done, Kris. I like how you framed the rock formation in the middle so you had walls of ice surrounding it. The magenta sky is a bonus and the ripples in the water make a nice effect. I understand your frustration with the weather. We’ve only had a couple of light snows here in NY and the temps. have stayed in the mid 30’s and low 40’s most of winter. I’ve have to grab the snow the day it falls before it starts to melt. Look forward to seeing more.
Thanks @Steve_Layman & @Donna_Callais - the framing had me wondering, but my instinct said it would work and the light would help bring up some modeling for a more 3D look that it really needs. I did my best with processing to accentuate that quality.
Kris, this is awesome. I love the sky and the warmish reflection on the ice. t still feels cold. I think your comp works well. Glad you were using those spikes…Ice is dangerous stuff.
Thanks @David_Bostock - the color contrast is pleasing, isn’t it? We were lucky some showed up in that basically blank sky. And yeah, love my steel spikes. Makes this kind of thing a lot easier and safer.
Thanks @Han_Schutten - glad you found it intriguing and that the framing works. I really do enjoy the big lakes on either side of Wisconsin and try to get to one or both of them at least once a year. They’re about equidistant from where I am - 3 hours.
This is really good!
The hue, saturation and luminance in the ice is spot on in my view, it’s all too easy to go under or over with the blue channel on ice like this.
The red, orange and yellow gradient in the sky is not too much or too subtle.
It was the perfect time of day for the low yellow, orange light on the rocks and ice (coming from the horizon) and the ambient light was perfect as well.
You certainly made good use of the hyperfocal distance with your 12-35/f2.8 lens. Wide angle never disappoints in that regard.
It definitely has depth and everything comes together in a way that conveys the mood of adventure (a cold adventure).
If I look at this in more of an abstract way, the rock in the center being at an angle looks like a fishing vessel leaving the harbor, headed out to sea for the “Catch of the day”
Thanks @Merv - I tried to go lightly with the processing since the scene was rather subtle in the way the light bounced between the boulders and across the water. It backlit the ice in the middle distance and I’m glad that comes through. I think the sun was just cresting for this.
In terms of hyperfocal distance, I think the natural focus fall off works fairly well. I use focus peaking with AFS to be sure I have what I want and it illustrates that fall off nicely. Not the same as the distance markers on old lenses, but it’s what we have.
