Image is from this last fall. Two Jack Lake near Banff, Canada. Shot with my sony a7iii and 100-400 lens. 100mm, 1/20th f18, ISO 100
Always like to hear what might be improved, well mostly.
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Hi Jeff,
I like the intimate view that you’ve captured here. I know that the mountain the background (Rundle is it) is huge and your perspective make the view want more.
The perspective with the side light provides depth which works for me.
My only nit is that I would like to see a little more on the top so that the ridge line isn’t cut off
Man, I love this photograph.
I agree with @Nathan_Klein that I want to see an itty bit of sky to convey scale if it was possible. Like the icing on a cake so to speak.
Can’t find any other nits on my end. The lighting and post-processing is mountain magical!
Wonderful photo Jeff. I like how the darker trees on the sides pull me towards the center and the overall view of the composition. Nice!!!
Wow, what a gorgeous photo Jeff. This time of year before the lakes freeze can be magical, and you certainly cashed in here. Was this taken in November?
I am going to go against the grain of some of the other comments here, and say that I think the wonderful intimate feeling to this image is enhanced by not including the sky or the horizon. To me this image is all about the snow covered trees and the reflection, and introducing the sky risks pulling the viewers eye away from that.
The processing looks great here, it’s a nice balance between the warm highlights and cool shadows. In terms of suggestion for improvement there are a couple dust bunnies to clone away in the water near the bottom edge. I’m also a bit ambivalent about the bright spot in the reflection in the bottom center of the image. This gets into personal subjective taste, but I could see a crop from the bottom to eliminate it (cloning of dust included too).
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Thanks folks. There is no sky in any of my images of the scene. It is Mt. Rundle as Nathan guessed and it really looms over this scene. This image is pretty much as framed in the camera, a bit off the bottom and sides as they were redundant in my mind and 4x5 aspect ratio seemed right. I couldn’t really tell what was dust on the bottom but I cleaned up some spots and cropped just a bit more, that bright spot is a bit distracting.
This is a lovely intimate scene Jeff and I think your processing is spot on. Your repost looks even better after removing the spots in the bottom of the frame.
Very nice image Jeff. I have to agree with Ed on the processing. Also, whatever Ed did to bring in that little extra pop is very good.
Beautiful scene Jeff! Great job with the intimate framing too; you’ve really boiled this down to a simple, yet very strong presentation. The light striking the trees is of course lovely and I really like the symmetry here created with the reflection.
You repost is excellent as it takes care of all that I would have nit-picked… 
Love this.
Lon
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Thanks Lon, Boiling down is a good way to put it. That’s sort of a nice purposeful mission!
I agree that this is a wonderful intimate composition and I really enjoy the mix of light and shadows. I think the crop off the bottom is a big improvement - that small bright spot commanded too much visual weight and the photo is improved without it. My only other thought is that you could consider brightening the shadows a tiny bit. This likely comes down to personal preference but I think a tiny bit more detail in the shadows could enhance the overall effect. Otherwise, this is a beautiful scene and you did a wonderful job capturing it.
Hi Sarah, Thanks for the ideas. I did just go back and look at the shadows. It had little effect until I got all the way to 100% and then it was on the darker pines on the sides and I like them darker. I looked at the Nature Photo Guides site, you have some really neat stuff there!!