View from Sandia Mountain, New Mexico

Hi Tom,

This is a great shot for someone new to photography. You have good foreground elements, great light and a beautiful sky (pretty normal for New Mexico!). Since this is a landscape photograph where you had some time to compose (as opposed to, say, street photography, which is very dynamic), I would urge you to use your mind as well as your viewfinder to compose your shot. So here's what I would do a little differently.

First, take the time to survey the scene in front of you. You have a great background with a lot of depth, and beautiful light, so it is the foreground you'll need to think about a bit more. Think about lines and interesting foreground elements that will break the scene up a bit and provide more dynamism to complement the dynamism in the sky. An interesting tree, a rock, a log or stump, a path leading away from you towards the horizon... Since your sky is more interesting than your foreground (in my opinion), I would make the foreground occupy less of the frame and point higher into the clouds. Getting down low to the ground would also ensure that any foreground elements you wish to retain in the picture will still be there.

Second, for a shot like this, if you're going to take just one exposure (as opposed to multiple bracketed shots), expose for the sky, not the ground. By doing so, you will bring out much more of the vivid oranges and yellows of the late afternoon (or early morning) light. This will make your foreground much darker, but with most modern DSLRs, it's always easier to recover detail from shadows than from blown highlights. And you do have a few blown highlights where the light from the left hits the clouds in the top left of your picture. This is where the histogram would be useful.

Third, I would recommend a little bit of post-processing to add some punch and really make the picture come to life. I'm assuming you shoot RAW, and RAW files tend to look a little flat straight out of the camera. All the detail is in the data; you just have to bring it out. A graduated filter and a bit more contrast for the sky, an adjustment brush to bring out the shadows in the foreground, a little bit more clarity and detail for the land in the distance. I would also clone out the distracting object creeping into the left side of the frame. Hope this helps.

Keep shooting!

Sid

Hi Tom, Thank you for sharing your photo and for providing some additional data relating to your photo.

If you are new to photography and consider your yourself a hobbyist, ignore all the technical jargon Sid has included in his feedback for the time being. They will come to you in good time.

But first, enjoy your new toy, the Canon T6i, play with all the nobs and buttons, get use to them and take lots of pictures. And before you know it, all the technical terms would have seep into your photographic knowledge and vocabulary.

Enjoy your photography.
Elan