This is the less obvious image at this location. If you turn 30 degrees from this spot, you will get a gorgeous view of a snow capped mountain. I took that picture too, but this small grouping of trees in the shape of a mountain standing in front of the rolling forest hills was special to me.
The background forest is hazy but realistic - would you do anything to change that? (Focus improvement, processing?)
What artistic feedback would you like if any?
I was hoping to include the small field of wildflowers in the foreground, but by getting low to include that area it brought the top of the trees too high in my opinion (compared to the horizon line) so I left it out. Any suggestions about composition or processing are welcome.
Pertinent technical details or techniques:
Panasonic GX85, 14-140mm lens @14 mm. f9, 1/320, ISO 320, hand-held. Cropped and edited in Lightroom.
I enjoy this scene, and the way the set of pine trees stands out against the softer, blue background. I would just recommend you desaturate and shift the hue of the pine trees on the right side that are just as vibrant right now, so that they stand out even more and you dont have those two areas competing so much.
I would probably crop most of the right side off and a little off the top. The cloud in the ULC is not adding anything to the scene and is a little distracting. I would also clone out the lone purple iris in the LLC. These are just my opinions and not necessarily correct.
This is certainly a grand view, Becky. I like my brother’s @Michael_Lowe’s crop suggestion as it focuses more attention on the stand of trees and the BG mountains. The clouds are another wonderful element in the image. Nicely done.
I agree with the cropping suggestions that have been made. I would even go further and crop just a little bit more off the bottom, to remove more of the yellow flowers in the foreground (again, just to remove a potential distraction). Good eye for spotting those trees and the shape they make! And I think the hazy background is fine - I think it adds some nice depth to the image. Nice shot!
Very often it is the small things that make a big difference in taking an image up a notch in terms of impact. Having the discipline to look for small distractions and issues (whether in-camera, or during post-processing), can make a huge difference in the quality of images. Little things near frame edges can be big distractions.
I like the crop suggestion presented by @Michael_Lowe, I think it tightens up the composition up nicely. I do like that stand of trees, it looks like a a group of sentinels standing guard over the valley below.
