Hi there, i'm new here and would like to get some opinions on my work. Thank you in advance for your constructive criticism. I present you two pictures of the same hidden waterfall somewhere in Brasil.
Hi there, i'm new here and would like to get some opinions on my work. Thank you in advance for your constructive criticism. I present you two pictures of the same hidden waterfall somewhere in Brasil.
The two photos have conflicting water directions that is difficult to work out......so detracts a wee bit.
Thank you for making me notice. Didn't thought about that.
Hi Alan, and welcome to the forum and this Group. Hope you enjoy the interaction here as much as I do. You're off to a good start! They are attractive images.
It is an unusual fall; I gather it drops into a stream coming in from the left.
As for CC, I think the fall's impact is lessened by those bright foreground rocks overpowering it a bit, especially in the second image where that bulky rock forms quite a dominant competing visual mass.
I'd probably have moved in a little closer for the first image, and/or used a longer lens, as it looks to me as if you have used a wide-angle lens, which has emphasised the foreground and made the fall look small. For the second image, if it were possible, I think I'd have tried to make that rock come in from bottom left or right, with less of it showing, and "pointing" diagonally up toward the fall.
Sometimes you can't get the composition you'd like. I don't know if you do much processing. With these images as they are, I'd tone down the colour in the rocks, making it darker and/or less saturated, and make the water in the falls brighter white, as they're greyish.
Thank you for the suggestions. In the first image the composition was my choice. In the second one I agree that the bulky rock takes a bit too much attention, but i couldn't move closer and with a 14mm a lot gets in the picture. I pumped up a bit the reds to create a contrast with the greens around the waterfall and tried to create two areas divided by the water stream. I get a lot of blue cast on water with this lens and when i desaturate remains a bit greyish, true. I didn't want to make it too bright in order to retain details. Do you think that with some dodge and burn would work?
That's more or less what I've done, Alan. I used a Brush tool to select the rock(s) and the fall, and desaturated and darkened the former, and lightened and increased contrast in the latter in each image. I could make various adjustments to one selection this way, whereas dodge/burn does one thing at a time in my software (ACDSee).
!4mm is very wide! You'd need Niagara Falls or be very close to get a big-looking waterfall. I've shot a lot of waterfalls. 20mm is my widest lens, and I rarely use it at falls. I'd probably have used my 28 and 35 mm lenses for these shots. Still, this is all very personal preference.
If you divide the image as you've done into two zones, I'd make them balance - which is what my first point was about, to put it differently.
Clearly you think about what you're doing, in aesthetic terms. I look forward to seeing more from you.
Hi Alan, I'd like more details in the water, a shorter exposure and some tricks in post processing would work. Nick Page has some great info on that on his youtube channel. Check https://youtu.be/cyic_Id5GeY?t=441
for example where he edits a waterfall picture. Also, I agree with Chris that you went too far with the saturation slider on the rocks, it's way too yellow/orange.