wiev from mountains peak

[Marija]

Hi,
this is my first landscape photo. I took this picture at mountains peak 1 906 meters altitude. Something is missing there, but I'm not sure what. I cropped the sky and for it nice clouds were lost so now sky is a little bit dull.
Like lines in the photo.
Questions: Can I do anything to improve this photo? Would different cropping make a difference? Maybe BW? Comments in general...

In advance thank you for your time and opinion!

camera: Olympus E 520
lens: 14 - 42mm
focal length: 37 mm
f number: F/9
exposure time: 1/250
exposure compensation: 0 step

[CaptainNH]

Nice first landscape shot Marija.

I can see from the shadows in the mid-ground that there were some nice big fluffy clouds up there - I would have liked to have seen them against that brilliant blue sky - a polarising filter would make the clouds really pop out.

The group of trees in the bottom left keep drawing my eye out of the photo and away from those mountain peaks - perhaps you could try re-cropping to leave out those trees and include more of the sky?

[Marija]

I tried what you wrote so this is result...

[tvoelcker]

I prefer the first since it shows more foreground.
However, it appears the haze was a little harsh.
Although I'm a huge fan of b&w I don't think there is enough tonal variences to make it a interesting b&w.
This is one of those captures where some of the post processing pro's could probably dress up pretty nice. Unfortunatley I'm not very good at PP.

[Marija]

Thanks for reply!
I'll try to play with PP ( actually that would be to practice PP ) to see is there anything I can do...but...

[Loving It]

The problem with top of the mountain shots, they never catch all the detail that is caught with the human eye. Here's a suggestion for the next time you shoot. Compose the picture with something in the foreground (rock, stump, bush, tree, flowers, something) This would add depth in the image. The eyes flow through the picture better when there is something of interest in the foreground, middle and background. In your image the diagnol line of the brown hills lead the eye through the picture, but there really isn't anything of interest to keep the attention.

Regarding the colors. Instead of boosting the saturation in post processing, duplicate the background. Change the copy layer to multiply. This will make the colors go really dark. Lower the opacity to around 10-20%. The colors of the mountains will be bolder and show through the haze better.

Another thought. If you live near this area, try shooting it the day after it has rained. The dirt will be washed off the landscape, making the colors bolder, and the haze will be reduced.

[Marija]

I've just started to learn about photography so I appreciate your advices very much! Thank you

But after re-cropping and PP this is still not OK photo...maybe someone with good skills in PP would make something out of it...but...



I did PP the way you suggested and here it is...

[Loving It]

I was at the Grand Tetons about a month ago. Most of my pictures had the same haze in them. The reason: I was traveling with family and didn't get there until around noon which is the worst time to take pictures, expecially on a sunny day. I processed the heck out of those shots to try to get the mountains to come through more and get the sky just right. In the end I only kept 5 and deleted the rest. All the processing in the world won't change the fact that my landscapes were taken with completely the wrong lighting. They are great for scrapbook, but not one I would sell as stock photo. I think that is what you have here. Early morning or evening or after a rain is the best time to take pictures of mountains. The haze isn't as bad around that time.

I like how the multiply boosted the colors. If there are some colors you want to tone down a bit more, you can select a low opacity on the erase tool ( 5-10%) and gradually go over these areas on the mulitply layer. You might want to make a duplicate multiply layer and turn it off first, so you have a back up in case you don't like the changes. You can try it with the sky so the lightness of the original layer shows through a bit more. Make sure you check the image at 50 to 75% zoom occasionally to make sure you are not living circle patterns from your eraser on the image.

[k9mom]

here's your orig with a lot of tweaking in CS4...if this were avail in a RAW file format, it'd be much easier to tweak shadow/highlights, color saturation/luminosity, etc. than it is with the JPG file. I'm still new to CS4 so, honestly, I don't what I'm doing yet and I'm sure someone with PS expertise could do a much better job than I...but it was a fun exercise for me, nonetheless.

[Marija]

You're right Loving It, it's about light. We were there at about 5-6 p.m and all my pictures are like that.. i can't do anything with them.. but on our way back when sun was going down light was great, colors were beautiful, all conditions were good except one .....I was in car with no possibility to say driver STOP! I tried to take photos out of car but of course it didn't work out

Thank you k9mom for your time

Here is my last try with this photo ( with GIMP)... Don't know what I was doing also