Wild Flowers in Crested Butte

I was trying to grasp the magnitude of the wildflowers and thought the riders just added a bit of character to the image.

What technical feedback would you like if any?

When I see fields of wild flowers, how do you make it unique? It just seemed busy.

What artistic feedback would you like if any?

Do the riders add or distract? I actually thought the picture was average without them and they added a sense of depth. Hard to judge the magnitude without them to bring the flowers into perspective. Had to crop this to 50% and should have used the zoom more effectively to get better detail.

Pertinent technical details or techniques:

(If the background has been replaced, etc. please be honest with your techniques to help others learn)Canon 7d Markll, Tamron 18-270, ISO 150, 65mm, 1/320sec, Polarizing filter.
LR and PS

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It’s the black (sky)…it has a post apoplectic edge of the earth feeling about it for me. Otherwise great, what a place, wish I could be there.
TY

Not sure what black sky you see. There is another ridge of forest behind th riders.
thanks for the feed back.

Thanks…the darker trees at the top of the image here look almost black. People have their monitors set differently, that could explain it.
TY

The combination of elements are outstanding. The sharpness is off but it still holds it own and has a painterly feel. Lovely scene that is enhanced by the horseback riders.

The riders and horses heading out through the meadow of flowers are the real story here. The flowers are wonderful, but the riders make the image. The composition is very nicely done, with good placement of the riders, and I like how you show the row of trees in the upper right corner. The darker background ridge is another effective part of the composition, it sets off the row of trees nicely. While I don’t think this ridge is too dark, it is a bit too blue/cool due to being in shadow, I would try warming that area up a bit.

My main concern with this image is that nothing is really in focus or sharp. I would be okay with all the flowers and landscape being soft, as long as the riders were sharp (but unfortunately they are not). I’m not sure if this was caused by not achieving focus properly, or from using too slow a shutter speed. If this softness is due to subject motion, you could have bumped the ISO up to freeze motion in the riders.

Thank you. I almost didn’t post it because off the lack of sharpness. Good suggestions

Thanks I had to crop a lot and lost detail. Should have zoomed in a bit for better clarity.

Charlie: I’m going to be lazy here and just ditto Ed’s comments. We get huge fields of flowers in Texas in the spring and I always like it when there is another element to add interest. I did some quick and dirty sharpening which may have helped some. Not sure where the softness is coming from unless its camera shake but at your SS and focal length that ought not to have been a big problem. Still a great scene and comp. Keep 'em coming. >=))>

I like your sharpening. I tried in LR but couldn’t get it. What did you do to get a shaper image?

Thanks.

Charlie: Sorry to be so tardy responding. My apologies. I do some basic sharpening in Lightroom on the RAW file but I do my final sizing and final sharpening in Photoshop. I’ve found it more effective to apply sharpening at the final output size. Once I resized your image to 1500 pixels at a resolution of 72 ppi I simply applied the default Smart Sharpen. I think I applied it twice to get the final output. Hope this helps.>=))>

Thanks. I haven’t used PS for sharpening but, I will try it.