Wall of Ice

Original

Rework - 1 Added more white to the fence & falls suggested by @_Kris @David_Bostock

I took a day trip to Niagara Falls, Canada this week with my partner. We expected to run into snow when we got close to Buffalo, but there was absolutely no snow. I found it amazing that the 60" and more of snow that fell there at Christmas time had all melted. It made up in not having snow by having great ice formations around the fall area. The mist from the falls was very heavy and the water flow was amazing from all the snow melt. Even getting wet from the mist that we ran into on some of the walk made for great memories. I think it would be almost impossible to get a photo that hasn’t been taken of these falls, but I tried to do my best to get shots that weren’t iconic. Oh, we had a beautiful full rainbow going across the falls all day. I will post a couple of those later.

Type of Critique Requested

  • Aesthetic: Feedback on the overall visual appeal of the image, including its color, lighting, cropping, and composition.

Specific Feedback and Self-Critique

I thought the iron fence covered in thick ice was beautiful. The winter light being low, was shining through the ice in some places giving it a warm glow. Having the falls in the background made it perfect. I’m finding that mist and fog is not as easy to process as it seems. Add to much contrast and the fog disappears, so I had to balance the two to get some contrast in the water, but not to much to lose the mist.

Technical Details

Sony a7r v 24-70mm @ 70mm
f/16
ss/ 1/6
ISO 125
ND filter var. 12

1 Like

Kinda neat, but the angle isn’t working for me. I’d rather have the fence straight on, but if it meant eliminating the falls I can see why you did it this way. I think the processing you describe worked nicely. You could try raising the whites just a little for more glow on the fence ice itself.

Hi Donna, this is really interesting. I love the intricate fence with tons of ice on it. Awesome. I think the comp works for me. I would try to open up the whites on the fence itself though. Bringing them up would help it stand out even more. I love the backlighting too.

I hope you don’t mind, but I am going to move this to the Non-Nature category. The fence is the primary subject and that is of course human-made.

Can’t wait to see your rainbow shots.

Cheers,
David

Donna, that little bit of brightness really makes it pop. Well done.

@_Kris @David_Bostock Thanks for taking a look at my image. I posted a rework where I took the image into ACR and used a gradient linear filter to lighten the whites on the ice. Maybe I didn’t go far enough. I think it helped to draw the eye in a little more. Thanks for the suggestion.

Kris, the prettiest part of the fall was here. The slant didn’t bother me. I tried a straight on with a different looking fence before I got to this section and I didn’t care for it. Maybe the fence wasn’t as pretty.

David, Sorry for putting this image in the wrong category. I thought the ice on the fence was the main subject and didn’t think of the fence as Non-Nature. I don’t mind at all that you put it in a different category. I’ll remember this in the future.

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Donna, I keep coming back to this because it is such an interesting, graphical taste with an incredible amount of ice. I’m just mesmerized. I also wondered what it would look like in B&W so took a stab at it. Hope you don’t mind:

Oh, that’s nice! I loved this iron fence with the thick ice and the low light shining throw the ice made it even more beautiful. I’m surprised more members aren’t curious about this image. Maybe the diagonal of the fence, like Kris said, isn’t working for them. I’m very happy that you are enjoying this photo. There is much to love about these falls and people from all over the world come to see them, but I found them very hard to photograph. The landscape is flat and the day we went there was a heavy mist. Sometimes you couldn’t even see the falls. Of course, for me, that made it more interesting, but a little harder to photograph. I may post one of the rainbow shots that may or may not be interesting to viewers. I also have a B&W one I may post. I’ll try playing around with B&W on this image. I’ve become very interested in B&W. Good processing isn’t as easy as it looks, at least for me. I’ve been watching videos hoping I can learn to process it better. Anyway David, thanks very much for your interest in this photo. It makes me feel like it wasn’t a total failure.

Donna, please don’t worry about the low response rate on this. It’s not the image, I can assure you. The Non-Nature category doesn’t get the traffic and responses that the nature categories do. As moderator of both the Non-Nature and Landscape categories I know that Non-Nature gets about 5-10% of the responses that the Landscape category does. And, that’s ok. Non-Nature is an opportunity for us to post images that we enjoy outside of nature.

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