Please provide photo critique... first time posting

Hi Parag, yeah to me the colors are way overdone. I don't think vibrance to 60 should ever be used. It's not so shocking on the rocks as it is on the sky. DId you shoot jpeg ? Coz I've had this effect in the sky when shooting jpeg and cranking the saturation/vibrance too high. There is no separation between the sky and the clouds anymore, it looks very weird. It's less pronounced on raw files but will obviously happen if you go too high. In any case, the sky was colorful enough, you didn't need much. You can play on the yellows and reds in the rocks, but I would have left the sky alone. Hope this helps.

I like the other worldly look that the over-saturation/vibrance brings but I think it's perhaps too much as well.

I think bring exposure and shadows down a bit could help bring some dimension, it gets a bit flattened out and it appear there is some very nice light and shadows happening in this scene.

First, I was able to recognize this immediately from the thumbnail. I was just in Iceland this summer and got to visit this crater at sunset (so the crater itself didn't photograph well). I love the color in the image, but the vibrancy is a bit too much. Maybe placing the vibrancy around 35-40 would keep the splendid color and make it look less edited. Personally, I would tone down the yellows slightly so they don't clash with the softer and darker reds and purples of the image.

Otherwise, this is a very crisp shot and the multiple exposures match up so seamlessly you could have said it was a one-exposure shot. Awesome shot!

Hi, Parag! I am inclined to agree that the colours look unnatural. although I haven't been to Iceland, and know colours can be amazing there..

The crater is pretty symmetrical, and your centred composition ILLUSTRATES it well, but I wonder if a more asymmetrical composition would make an ultimately more interesting photo. Also, perhaps the image is a litltle flat, lacking a bit of depth for a landscape.

I append an edit where I've cropped off a bit of the bottom and right, and increased contrast and reduced saturation below the skyline, boosting cyan a bit in the lake to compensate, so it's not too dull.

I think that I would have made an image like yours as a record shot, but also made asymmetrical images, e.g. by swinging the camera up and to the left a bit, including more sky, or perhaps zooming in as my edit approximates.

Having said all that... it's an excellent image, and brave you for posting! Keep it up.

Hi Parag,

Bright areas, saturated colors and sharp detail attract the viewer's eye. With so much high saturation color everywhere the viewer's eye will tend to jump around and not settle on the subject. (I really like The Photographer's Eye books by Michael Freeman for thinking about landscape composition.) People like somewhat unrealistic colors, but it's easy to go too far.

This shot may be better from above and shooting straight down. You could consider a drone as you next "camera". Then all those colored rock slides would point towards the pool in an interesting and abstract way.

I also think the colors are not a harmonious combination (e.g. analogous, complementary, monochromatic, split complementary, triadic)

I bet it would look great in black and white. Then all you have to do is manage detail and brightness levels.

I find landscapes challenging, so take all this advice with a grain of salt. '-)