Critique Style Requested: Standard
The photographer is looking for generalized feedback about the aesthetic and technical qualities of their image.
A wider view of a portion of the Tieton River ice. This is about 1/3 of the area that had remarkable ice.
Any feedback.
5DMK4; 24/70 at 38; 1/400th; 9.0; 1600 ISO; WB: Cloudy. Some sharpening; a little dehaze; some added saturation .
Jim,
That’s a great shot. The ice gives the image a real different, almost alien look.
I find the top bank and the lower LH corner distract from those great ice patterns. See my very quick square crop.
Wonderful image, Jim. I love the jagged ice patterns and the way they’ve clustered around the rocks. It’s a great find. I also like what @Jaded62 did with his crop to make the ice patterns a bit more prominent.
Oh my, that’s exceptional Jim; very nice.
I could see just a tad brighter, at least on my monitor, and agree that the crop improves it. If you wanted to keep 3:2, I think just removing some of the top and left works too:
@John_Kilgour Thank you. @John_Williams Thank you. I did experiment with lighter and cropped, but liked the slightly darker. Now that I see your version, I’m not so sure.
Great eye to see this. The ice patterns radiating from the rocks are spectacular. I like both @Jaded62 and @John_Williams reworks also.
This is wonderful Jim. I love all those radiating spikes of ice around the rocks. I also like @John_Williams small tweaks as I think they made an already wonderful image even better. Were you able to get into the water for some macro images of the ice patterns? Beautifully done!
@Ed_Lowe Thank you. I was able to take some closeups (relatively closeup). Had to walk on the rocks. Didn’t want to break the ice. I posted a couple in Macro.
Great work Jim. I’m wondering if there is any warmth in those rocks that could be brought out to complement all that blue. If so, that might take it up a notch.
Igor, Thank you. Interesting suggestion. I’ll give it a go.
Jim, this is a super interesting image. I love the blue colorcast in the ice and I also love @Igor_Doncov idea about trying to add a little contrasting warmth to the rocks. The ice shards in the lower center of the image are what really attract my eye and I find that the bank of the river in the TRC is a little bit distracting so a crop works as @Jaded62 and @John_Williams have shown. I thought I would throw my hat in the ring on a crop to try and distill this down to just those interesting, sharp ice shards by cropping way in. Perhaps not any better but just different. Take it for what it’s worth. 
I see so many different crops that might work so you could certainly spend some time playing with this image.
David, Thanks. Nice version. I do have some shots of the shards but didn’t want top overload on ice photos.
I used to photograph flowers so I can’t help but seeing the image as a bunch of iced flowers. Probably it is also for this reason that I prefer the version of David Haynes. What a photo! I will never be able to do something like this. Splendid for the vision and the technique.
@Giuseppe_Guadagno Thank you. Your very kind words leave me at a loss for adequate words in response; especially knowing your wonderful photographic abilities.
Like the above crop the best. On the original the dirt near the top is distracting. Love the patterns and diagonals. Creative shot.
