Howard Snyder
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gdanmitchell wrote:
I like the feeling of this photograph quite a bit. (Just clicked the "like" link.)
Things that attract me to it include: the beautiful cross lighting on the mountains, the many layers, each with a different sort of color and light, the beautiful treatment of the foreground forest area. Well done!
Since I'm a critic of every photograph, including my own, I always ask "What might I do differently" as part of the process of exploring the interpretation of the scene - as it sounds like you have done with the several iterations of this photograph that you refer to. I hope you don't mind if I engage in a bit of that with this photograph - consider it "thinking out loud" and feel free to ignore my thoughts. I notice three things:
1. Sky and clouds - While I like dramatic skies, to my eye the gradient applied to the sky seems a bit unnaturally strong, especially near the very top where the dramatically dark clouds almost begin to compete for my attention with the central, and also dramatic, dark areas of the mountains below. I might also consider subtly toning down the very bright area in the clouds near the right side of the frame - they almost look blown out, and a bit of desaturation of the color might be worth trying.
2. Bright area - I wonder if you used a GND filter on this shot, as opposed to making the overall foreground-to-sky gradient in post? If so, or if the gradient was accomplished with a gradient mask, to my eye it left the area in the valley beneath the peak on the right side looking a bit bright compared to other areas in the frame. I'm not certain about this, and the effect could be very lovely in a print - but my initial instinct might be to try a bit of a masked curve in that area that kept the lightest tones as they are but perhaps darkened some of the middle tones just a bit. (I'm offering this up as something to try, and I'm not at all certain that it would be an improvement if that area has the right kind of luminous quality already in a larger printed version.)
3. Edge issue - I reflexively scan the edges of almost every photograph - and my scan of this photograph took me to that thin tree right on (and partially over) the right edge of the frame. My feeling is that it doesn't add anything and might even distract a bit and that it could be left out. If I were trying to keep the same aspect ratio I might crop enough from the right and the top - from the right to eliminate that tree and from the top to take out just a sliver of the darkest clouds.
None of this may be on the right track, and you could easily decide that this already beautiful photograph would not benefit from any of these ideas. As we say, YMMV!
Again, nice work!
Dan...Show more →
Hi Don,
Thanks for taking the time to write your thoughts. In this case, I am going to respectfully disregard them. I have spent many hours looking at this image and I am very happy with how this turned out. I am at a point where I am very confident of my processing technique and any image presented publicly has been scrutinized to death and make sure it's up to my standards.
Having said that, I am extremely grateful that you took the time to share your views and provide critique/feedback that is obviously well considered and clearly expressed.
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