I've always been drawn to mountain photography, especially in a minimalist sense. I would love any and all harsh cc on this photo. It is the one of the first photos I've taken that Invokes a feeling in me, and one of the few I've taken that I truly love. I would love to build upon this!
I would also love to hear any suggestions you have in general for producing more "minimal" mountain photographs.
Any suggestions? Minimal Mountains
Try dropping the exposure a 1/2 to 1 full stop or experiment with a circular polarizer. You might try shooting with a ND filter with 3to5" exposure to smooth the clouds to see what effect it creates.
I definitely need to experiment with filters next time. Thanks for the suggestion! I'm kicking myself now for not trying a long exposure as the thought did cross my mind while shooting, I just got a little anxious I would miss something while setting it up.
I had exactly that issue last time while hiking. By the time you get your tripod and filters, composition and exposure time the magic can be over. Clouds move to fast in the mountains.
Also a long exposure can very well ruin your image. For this one for example i can't see it happening. You would take away all detail from the clouds.
For processing i would darken it down just a bit, maybe some clarity on the rock, a little more detail in the clouds and a square crop.
I love these kind of photos and took quite a few myself during the spring hikes this year.
I'm attaching a negative example on long exposure, where i think it ruined the image (both images are almost unedited, just posting them for the long expo effect). Probably i also overdid the time with 260 seconds :D I have others with 30 seconds where the effect is the same. The problem is, that the clouds don't always move in an orderly fashion and then end up just covering everything.
Thanks for posting the example of the long exposure image, while I do like it I am now much happier with my camera settings. I don't think the long exposure captures the feel I was aiming for as well.
I tried bringing down the exposure a touch, and I think it helped. Thanks for your comment! I love that first picture you posted by the way!
Thank you!
There certainly are examples of very good results of long exposure in the mountains, I just no recipe to make any image better.
So far I have always been happy with short exposures.
I like Terry's idea of using an ND filter to get a little more "personality" into the image. I like the concept and would like to see it on a larger screen than this laptop. I look at images as if I were going to print them. This needs just a little more "body" for lack of a better term, to make it a terrific print.
Thank you for this suggestion. I agree with trying a longer exposure, envisioning it I can see it being a very nice image this way.
I see exactly what you are going for here, and I really need to to see it printed large.
Based upon what I'm seeing on the screen, I would like to see the mountain a little bit darker, and more details in the clouds.
In any case, I really like this.
Hey Eric! I really do like the picture and the idea behind it. Would have tried to go with a shorter exposure. Huge part of the clouds/fog seem to be blown out and are just plain white. Maybe you can still do something in post processing. Would look better (for my taste) if you still got some contrast and structure there.