Midnight sun at the moutains of Norway

[hakon]

Hi!

This is my very first picture I post at any picture critique forum, but I guess the best way to learn is to jump into it. I find composing extremly differcult. The rule of three does not guarantee any great picture, but I feel it turned out quite ok in this picture .

The picture was taken July 9th at Selvær, Norway at our vacation home. It was ten minutes to midnight and the sun was still shining, many pictures of the sun did not work out at all, but in the end of the session I took some pictures of the shoreline about 15 nautical miles to the east. The low sun coloured the mountains and glaciers quite nicely pink.

I have not edited the file after the shot. The picture was shot with a Pentax K20D with exposure 1/2 sec at f32 with ISO 200. I used a fixed 50mm Pentax lens from the 70ties

[Henry Wilt]

I think that is a beautiful picture, the mountains in the background look surreal. My only comment would be that I'm not entirely sure if the foreground darkness clashes a bit with the softness of the mountain range, but, if you cropped it it would upset your rule of thirds composition. I'm only very new at this so please take my words with a pinch of salt, I would love to be able to get a capture like this. It's best to wait until the real experts give you some proper advise.

[Michael_2010]

I like it. The pastel sky is almost dream-like. I'm not real sure about the foreground either. It doesn't really hurt the capture, but it doesn't add a lot either because the detail gets lost. Nice overall shot though.

[Aleix]

Hello fellow K20Der!

Nice shot, IMO. Well composed, following the rule of thirds. I like the wooden poles(?) and rocks at the lower right intersection, which in combination with the peak at the lower left give depth to the capture. About exposure, I believe that even when it could seem a bit dark at first, it reproduces the midnight sun intensity of light. If you'd push brightness up, then it would probably look like a daylight capture and could even 'harm' the nice sky (dreamy, like Michael described it). So I'd let it like it is

Greetings

[Krusty79]

hakon,

That's a beautiful shot for your first post. It's well composed and I like the pastel mountains in the background. There is no strong subject, though. I can't decide whether those wooden stakes in the foreground are helping/hurting the image. I think you need the green grass in the foreground, as it would not be as good of an image if you walked up to the water's edge and took the shot.

The image does have a dark, fuzzy quality to it. It looks underexposed if you check your histogram. I see you took a 1/2 second exposure. Did you use a tripod? Also, I've read here on the forums that you should not use an f/stop smaller than about f/11 or you start introducing diffraction, which degrades sharpness. That could explain the fuzziness. You might have to play around with your image editing program to see if you can brighten things up a bit without losing the dreamy quality.

Greg