Willow Springs Lake, Arizona

Critique Style Requested: Initial Reaction

Please share your immediate response to the image before reading the photographer’s intent (obscured text below) or other comments. The photographer seeks a genuinely unbiased first impression.

Questions to guide your feedback

What’s your initial emotional response to this image?
What elements draw your attention first?

Other Information

Please leave your feedback before viewing the blurred information below, once you have replied, click to reveal the text and see if your assessment aligns with the photographer. Remember, this if for their benefit to learn what your unbiased reaction is.

Specific Feedback

Emotional: Feedback on emotional impact and artistic value.


Critique Template

Use of the template is optional, but it can help spark ideas.

  • Vision and Purpose:
  • Conceptual:
  • Emotional Impact and Mood:
  • Composition:
  • Balance and Visual Weight:
  • Depth and Dimension:
  • Color:
  • Lighting:
  • Processing:
  • Technical:

Hi Bill,
My first reaction to this image was that this location would be a wonderful place to just sit and pause for a few moments and I find that the stillness of the water only reinforces that mood. The reflection is quite lovely and the color palette of blues and greens work beautifully together. I am also enjoying the colors of the rock as well as it’s shape. My only suggestion would be to clone out those two rocks and mud on the right side as the detract from all the goodness of the rest of the scene. I hope you do not mind, but here is a rework with what I was thinking. I also cropped a little from the left to balance the scene as well as removing that bit of blue sky. Beautifully done.

Well shoot; @Ed_Lowe just stole all my thunder. What he said.

@John_Williams said precisely what I was going to say, that @Ed_Lowe had the same ideas for the image I do. Gorgeous photo, @Gill_Vanderlip. This is the kind of place I could easily sit for hours and just watch the day go by.

Thanks for the feedback, all! I agree that simpler is better in photographs. There is so much detail and light in even simple photographs, in the things themselves. It’s always tempting to try and push the complexity of compositions, imagining some kind of music might rise out of it, but it’s always risky. Also, retouching is better now that it has ever been, and our new software makes it more practical. Always the question; even if we can, should we?