Grayson Highlands of Virginia

[rmcheek]

This weekend was my Fall break so the family and I took at trip up to Grayson Highlands State Park in Virginia for the day. The fall leaves were amazing! This was my first time really working in Manual mode and I feel like I finally have a good basic concept of the settings. This is my favorite photo I captured. It was minimally edited in iPhoto. Let me know what you think!

EXIF
ISO 200
Focal Length: 24mm
Aperture Value: f/9
Shutter Speed: 1/100



IMG_4224 by rcheek08, on Flickr

[Infinite Monkey]

Nice shot. However, while the trail and the fence do lead your eye towards the horizon, I'd like to either see some object of interest anchoring the foreground or lose some of the lead-in to get more quickly to the autumn colors that are the heart of the scene. The fall colors are amazing here but you almost have to strain to get to see them as they mainly are found only in the hill in the middle area of the image while the image is dominated by the rather neutral trail and the weeded field next to it.

Good choice of aperture, BTW, as f9 allowed for wide DOF which works well for this image.

[Krusty79]

I agree that it's a nice shot, but some things could be improved. I agree with the previous comment that a focal point will help. I can see why you chose that part of the trail, where it is more distinct, but like the IM said, that means the fall colors are more distant and look more like an afterthought.

I also think the relatively bright sky has caused the ground to be underexposed. A graduated ND filter could have helped in that case. If you shot RAW, you could make one jpg for the sky and one for the ground and blend the exposures using a layer mask.

[rmcheek]

Thanks for the input. It really helps open my mind up a little more. I've been trying to crop the photo to achieve the desired effect of more fall colors and less weedy field, but I can't decide how to go about doing so. If anyone wants to crop and repost on this feed, feel free to do so.

[Doug Sundseth]

I think if you were to use a longer lens shooting from the same location you shot this from (or perhaps a bit to camera left) you would have gotten a better result.

The fence would be a stronger element in the image, the path would still be there, but would take up less of the image, the leaf colors would be much more prominent, and the layers of hills in the distance would be stronger as well.

Edit:

I've attached an example of what I'm talking about.