This is from a couple months ago out at Pettigrew State Park. I am always trying to learn ways to improve my shots, so I thought I'd post here to get some feedback.
This is from a couple months ago out at Pettigrew State Park. I am always trying to learn ways to improve my shots, so I thought I'd post here to get some feedback.
Lots of positives in this. Your composition shows a lot of thought. You've balanced the dock nicely with the land on the opposite side of the shot. The reflections are sharp and the fire in the sky is a nice catch. I like the way the dock looks as though it is floating in air.
We all have our preferences, of course, and my tweaks on this would have been to bring up the shadows at the bottom only slightly to keep them from being crushed and to bring out a little bit of definition in the dock on the right side. I'm not sure if the sunrise was too overexposed to bring down a little more for detail, but I might have shot one stop down and then just worked to bring the shadows out in post. You could also have gotten a shot with the exposure set for the the foreground for a more precise blend.
Definitely more to like about this, and in my book any improvements are minor adjustments in post.
Thank you! I've only done a few minor adjustments but was wary of going too far. I'm fairly new to Lightroom so I'm still figuring out it's capabilities. I'll mess around with it a bit more and see if I can bring out the shadows as you suggested.
I agree with Emile! I can't think of anything else to add other than More Please!
Thank you! I'll try to post some more soon.
Diggin' the tones and colors, Travis - grats on a memorable sunset shot.
As far as constructive criticism: I would prefer the scene cropped to eliminate the branches on the left (I realize that you may not have had a choice to do so when shooting). To me, this landscape is about the clean lines and angles, which are created by the dock and horizon, so having the branches disrupts the mood for me. Just eyeballing the image, I think you can achieve this and still include enough color / detail in the clouds to showcase the sunrise.
As Emile indicated, this is all subjective, so if you like the branches, then definitely go with your preference.
Thank you! Yeah, I was stuck with the branches on the left. I'll try to crop them out to see what I can come up with.
If you find that the result is too tight and want more breathing room, you could probably crop to include the rightmost 25% of the branches, magnify, then clone them out pretty easily. I really like all of the other elements in the image though.