landscape
Hi all, I just joined the community and I really need and want feedback and critique from people. Let me know what you guys think of this photo! It's Lake 22 in Washington
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10 Comments
The sky is blown out. Other than that not too bad, I would have shot it in some type of HDR to give it more contrast.
i don't think the sky is blown out, there are just no clouds...
Thank you for the advices! Sky is actually blown out. Realized later..
Joseph,
Welcome to the group. This looks like a beautiful location. The composition just is not working for me. I'll explain in the spirit of being helpful. You did the right thing in minimizing the sky as there is not much going on there...but the lake is very busy...to busy IMHO with rocks, branches, and reflection. It all kind of blends together into a busy scene. My eye can not find a subject to latch onto. The iced part of the water also does not add interest as it is just a grey zone. two thoughts....
1. Going wider, getting lower, and letting the edge of the lake and reflections become the foreground would likely work much better to minimize the iced water (keep the sky minimal unless it has some nice features).
2. Move forward to the ice (easy to say and cold to pull off I bet) and contrast the smooth ice against the mountains with an interesting foreground subject in / on the ice.
I hope I have not been to harsh..definitely not my intent.
Mike
Wow! Thank you SO much for honest and helpful critique. I agree with you. The composition definitely needs some work. So glad I found out about this community. I will definitely post more on this group! Thank you.
There's a lot of potential in this scene, but I agree with Michael in that my eyes don't know where to go. I'm wondering if you could have used some of those big logs in the foreground or perhaps the lake margin as a leading line to draw the eyes into the image. Colours and tonality can be altered in post-processing (though do try and get them right in camera), but the composition can't, so my advice right now would be to research and understand the basics of composition, in particular the use of leading lines to draw the viewer in and around the image.
Best of luck!
Hey, thank you so much for the feedback. Definitely have to work on the composition. I'm still working on the post processing and as of now, I'm just messing around kind of thing but I'm trying to learn photoshop and lightroom more and just get more comfortable with it! But like you said, get it right in the camera first and get the composition right. Thank you Stephen!
You've gotten a lot of good feedback and I'm pretty much just echoing what has already been said. Get lower, Much lower, and get close to those rocks in the foreground. This landscape has plenty of potential to look dramatic. If possible, wait for some interesting clouds so you can add more sky to the image. Nice start, now just implement the critiques and you're sure to have an awesome image!
I would need more sky in the image for it to be appealing, the composition (as some have already said) just isn't working right now. I do like the foreground and depth, however.
The foreground clutter is distracting.