Snug Haven

[SwissJon]

I took this this evening. -13 was rather chilly for photography, especially since I was standing around for a couple of hours..

I'm reasonably happy with the result, but I've a couple of questions:

The river in the foreground.. Is it distracting? I flipped the photo horizontally and immediately found the eye was lead out of the picture.. So this way round do you find it draws your eye in, or is it a distraction?

Would you do some colour correction on the snow in the foreground, or leave it blue as it is?

Is the foreground too dark?

I'm just a bit worried this is "just another sunset"?

Thanks as ever.



Exif:
34mm
F/16
1/10s
ISO100

[Dylan-06]

Beautiful....

don't think this could ever be described as 'just another sunset'

[SwissJon]

Oh.. I just noticed.. I wanted this in the critique forum. Would one of the mods be kind enough to move it please?

[Doug Sundseth]

I don't find the river distracting, but I think there might be a bit too much weight in the foreground. Cropping up from the bottom or possibly shooting from lower and cropping to a pano might be worth a try.

The snow color is fine, I think. Snow really is blue in most lighting conditions, and it doesn't really look quite right if you change it too much. (Though it's sometimes worthwhile to warm everything up a bit to increase the color in the sky.)

I think the foreground is too dark. I find myself straining to pick out detail in what is the largest part of the photo in the current crop. (Might change with a different crop.)

For me, at least, the most interesting parts of the photo don't take up enough of the available canvas. You might consider cropping just left of the first clump of grass and just past where the taller trees start on the right. The result would be a very square aspect ratio, but I think it might work.

Finally, 10 degrees (old money) is just crisp, not really cold.

[SwissJon]

Ok.. Had a quick go at altering this in PS, but to be honest, I find it's lost something.

Not sure what you mean by the crops, Wanna just grab a copy and show me? The photo below is 600px full sized, you're welcome to muck about with it.

[Hill Country Hack]

I pretty much agree with Doug with the exception of the foreground being too dark. You re-do has lost some of "it".

The stream does lead my eye out of the frame, but I think it can be fixed/lessened with a crop. I'm at work so I'll explain the best I can. Come in from camera left in the vertical plane to either split the left most grass tuft or crop between the two tufts. Come down from the top to just above the upper line of clouds. It may leave a pretty square crop though.

[Doug Sundseth]

So, what I was thinking of is something like the attached version below.

Crop the sides to increase the weight of the river. Leave the sky alone, and raise the midtones and highlights on the snow without doing too much to the shadows.

For that latter, I used a curves layer, with a gradient fill on the layer mask (which does a pretty good job of emulating an ND Grad filter.

[SwissJon]

Hmm.. I'm not so keen on the crop if I'm really honest. I find the river leads my eye out of the frame, I'd looked at a similar crop on a different photo I took at the time, but feel on the original the small lump of snow at the end of the river stops the eye falling off, if you see what I mean. And I also find the two tufts of grass lead the eye into the frame from the left, providing a diagonal balance with the river. The single tuft is somehow lonely and imbalanced.

I do like what you did in post however, I think it's better than my second attempt.. I've had a go at it..

[EmyB]

Newbie here. But I do prefer Doug's crop.

[beetwo77]

That doens't mean I don't like the photo. Love the sunset and colours. I do find the foreground too dark and the composition a bit distracting but thats completely personal preference. I like 2:1 ratio or even 3:1 ratio panoramic images so I've had a crack at recutting this image and done some photoshopping to bring up the foreground, add some contrast and cool the colour down a bit. This is more to my style with the cropping removing one of the plants to simplify the image and bringing the water course into the middle of the image. I like lead in lines but the creek didnt seem to lead me into the image the right way so I stuck it smack bang in the middle. Thanks for sharing your great image. Here is my version for a different take:



PS I may have moved the plant a little bit haha very dodgey photoshop skills but I like it there!