What changed: Lengthened and dodged the fence and, brought back some highlights in the clouds, upped the saturation a pinch, sharpened the entire image more, took Jacek’s suggestion on the grasses under the fence.
The photographer is looking for thoughtful feedback on the image as a whole, especially around the areas noted below.
Feedback Focus: Artistic / Expressive
About This Image
This image was take on a backroad where I was the only human (there were a cows a ways down the pasture). The feeling of peace and solitude was truly overwhelming. I lingered here for a good bit and struggled to pull myself away.
Feedback Requested
I’m open to any feedback that would help make this a better image and bring out the “All’s right with the world” feel.
Technical Details
Camera: NIKON Z 8
Lens: NIKKOR Z 24-120mm f/4 S
Focal length: 28mm
Shutter speed: 1/200s
Aperture: f/6.3
ISO: 64
How beautiful Holly. I can see why you stopped and lingered. I really like your composition. The fence is a nice anchor, and the field leading to the mountain and beautiful snow/clouds adds a nice bucolic touch.
One trap when posting for review is that photographers tend to be over-critical, and so technical details can subtract from the mood. (This is less of an issue when posting for the friends and family crowd.) Here, recovering the highlights, rotating slightly clockwise, and reducing the saturation slightly would enhance the “All’s right with the world” feel for me.
Regardless, this image invites me to “pause and rest awhile.”
John, Thank you so much for your comments. Clearly I am still learning, especially on the processing end. A critical eye, and constructive feedback is exactly why I joined NPN. I truly appreciate your expertise and willingness to review. I used your suggestions and basically re-processed the image. Please let me know if I’m on the right track. I know it isn’t the best image in the world (it’s soft in areas, mid-day, harsh Colorado sun at altitude, on and on). Thank you!
Good advice from John. I thought the image was a little oversaturated, but in a good way. It’s really interesting. What you can do with contrast, different colors, profile settings. It could be fascinating to take a long time to learn but practice is what you need to do. Keep up the good work. I’m not sure where you live, but I lived in Boulder for 10+ years back in the 70s and 80s.
Holly, beautiful picture of a beautiful place. The revision is great however I prefered the original fence. Together with the meadow it was seeming to invite for going over it. In the revision it’s more like a barrier. And usually three look better than two. I can be wrong, I’m not an expert, like you I’m here to learn.
If I may, I modified a little the revision. I can’t do it accurately using a downloaded jpg file but here is what I did: I cropped the dry grass in the lower left corner and a small stripe of green at the bottom, added some light on the shadows on the fence, reduced light and saturation below the fence and finally increased sharpness of the whole image. I’m attaching my image however as I said the result is not accurately what I wanted to do.
Holly: Wonderful scene and isn’t it grand to have such a beautiful place all to yourself? I like the original but do think the revision is a plus. I also like what @JacekZielinski did which makes it a touch more dramatic for me. A special singular moment nicely rendered.>=))>
What a magnificent and beautiful landscape. I love the pastoral mood and feel to this, and absolutely this speaks to “All’s right with the world” - At least I tend to look at things in such a positive way. I’ve felt this way on remote roads where there is nothing - often times not even a fence or a cow.
Thanks for taking the time to revise and considering the feedback. If you haven’t figured it out already, color, contrast, saturation, white balance, etc. etc., is mostly subjective and often personal. I think “most” folks have a goal of keeping their edits to remain as natural and realistic as possible - the subject part for me is pushing that limit to make the scene the best that it can be.
So for me, I would have strived for something between your original and your revision based on the feedback. While I think your revised version is very natural… we have the disadvantage of knowing what the original was. I liked the punch, but agree about the subjective highlights and saturation. Maybe something in between.
The other thing, I preferred the original presentation before the crop. It gave me that “pastoral” and expansive landscape feel. The crop seems cramped to me (again, only relative because I can compare to the original.)
This is a beautiful landscape and worthy to keep tweaking. And of course tweaking until YOU are happy. You’ve got a wonderful image to work from.
Thank you @Lon_Overacker, @Bill_Fach, @JacekZielinski, @Huw_Thomas, @David_Schoen, @John_Williams! I can’t thank you all enough for your comments and suggestions. I have taken all of the ideas and made another revision. As Lon said, I’m hoping it’s more middle. I’m finding that my tendency is to go bold and bright, but I do want it to look natural and not over-processed (unless it’s intended to be so) especially for a landscape such as this. This “tweaking” is really helping on how to look at my images. In the 3rd revision…any other tweaks? I so appreciate your time and opinions:o)
Ooh this is such a fun process to watch you go through. I have a similar photo taken in 2018 in northern California. Mountains, golden grasses, mountains and blue sky with puffy clouds - absolutely classic and worth stopping for every time. Your journey with this photo is one you’ll probably take with many over time and I think the 3rd version pushes the drama and the peacefulness across very well.
