Constructive Criticism Welcome

[meyersm]

Hey y'all. I just moved out to Colorado so needless to say I've had a lot more opportunities for landscape photography. I still need to invest in some decent photo editing software, the only thing I've done to these photos is crop some of them to a 3x2 aspect ratio. One also has slight curve adjustment. Hopefully I can buy lightroom around christmas time. All of these were shot with a Canon G10. Any comments welcome.

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Excellent photographs, given the described limitations.

[Dick Roadnight]

Hey y'all. I just moved out to Colorado so needless to say I've had a lot more opportunities for landscape photography. I still need to invest in some decent photo editing software, the only thing I've done to these photos is crop some of them to a 3x2 aspect ratio. One also has slight curve adjustment. Hopefully I can buy lightroom around christmas time. All of these were shot with a Canon G10. Any comments welcome.

1    looks a  bit blue on the Mac book pro, but less so on the Eizo - you could try White balance.
2    looks too contrasty on the Eizo but OK on the Mac - could try shadow fill and polarizer... nice
3    looks a bit blue

[Rocco Penny]

There's a fellow who's photography you must see.
Search the archives for bill t.
He has a website too
http://www.unit16.net/
Your work reminds me vaguely of his.
He's simply a superior landscape guy but more, really makes the images he makes feel boundless

[langier]

Wait for the light on the land and be there to get it!

Too much shadow with muddy detail, IMHO.

No need to crop, simply use the full-frame of the camera and compose accordingly.

I would agree with Rocco's suggestion and take a look at those photos at Bill T's site. Look at the detail in both the highlights and shadows and look at the punch of the images. The light is what makes them superb!

[DwayneOakes]

Solid base images here ! The next level for you would be to learn selective enhancements to bring out the great light and colors in your photos.
Keep at it you got a good eye for it !

PS Keep in mind that this type of editing should be done using RAW as there is way
more data to work with. You can only do so much with a jpeg file.

Take care,
Dwayne Oakes

before


after (the large snow patch in the FG was healed out,as it was a bit of a distraction)


before


after

[JBerardi]

They're all pretty good; I think the third one is great. I really like the limited color range and the subdued light. The mountain-obscured-by-clouds thing is always a good look, then the fence and what I guess is some kind of path on the left side create subtle curves that lead the eye to it (from the deadest part of the scene). Really nicely done.

As long as we're playing the post-processing game, I've attached my take on it. Just added little contrast in the shadows, I think the highlights should remain fairly flat for something this overcast.

[meyersm]

Hey everyone,

I appreciate all of the comments and input. Langier, I agree with what you said about the shadows looking somewhat muddy in photographs 1 and 3. However, the lighting on those particular scenes was what triggered me to take the shots in the first place. When I took photo 3 it was a very dark and overcast day, but then suddenly the light shone through onto the one hill that looks lightest in the photograph. Do you think I could have used exposure compensation to increase detail in the foreground?

Looking back at the histogram, I probably could have exposed to the right slightly more to increase detail in the shadow. But beyond that, do you have any suggestions for increasing detail in the foreground in dark lighting conditions, for example during a sunset like photograph 1?

As far as the cropping issue/changing the aspect ratio goes, I think photograph 1 is enhanced by the cropping. My camera shoots in 4x3 aspect ratio by default, which didn't really suit the scene in photo 1, where the interesting detail in the photo stretches horizontally...

Thanks to those with the editing suggestions. Dwayne, I like what you did with image 1, although I might go for a more subtle enhancement, and I agree the snow patch is something of a distraction. Image 3 I like J Berardi's take, although I think if I had photoshop I would try a luminosity mask on the foreground area to lighten it up a touch more.

Dick, your suggestions for 1 and 3 proved dead on, and when I went back into the editing software Canon provides (very limited), changed the white balance and was pleased with the result.

Hopefully pretty soon I will have some decent processing software, and I'll be able to take the next step in the game.

Cheers,

Brent

[brandtb]

#1 I would ask myself...2/3's of the image is clumps of grass and snow without any interesting color of light...is this interesting?...would this be interesting to a viewer?...what does this contribute to the photograph?  The lumpy rhythm of the grass clumps and the lumpy clouds "cancel out" each other in away to me.  I see beautiful dusk, but not a good photograph here.
#2 There are two subjects - the tree (underexposed) and the rocks in foreground and both move the viewers eyes out of frame to lower left and to upper right...because of their inherent angle.  They are also two competing subjects in a way...and none wins...and there is not a good photograph here to me.
#3 I really like this photograph a lot for a variety of reasons. The great horizontal bands.  The range of colors and light/dark values are quite poetic.  The combination of more neutral grays and golds are something I don't see that often and very interesting. I would suggest trying out a few things.  One is bump up the shadow/mid values as in DwayneO's examples...but keep the sky and bg moody and not lightened up.  You might use the clarity or contrast brush to affect some areas, as well you might try to hit some of the stones and grasses in fg a little bit...I did this quickly in attached. The fg is nice with a lot of interesting aspects/objects, but you could try crop as in attached example (remove fence for this crop?). If this was my photo – I would probably end up tweaking/trial&error quite a bit – it’s worth the work.  Also, I noticed this was shot at f4 – was there a reason for this?

[Glenn NK]

I pretty well agree with Brandt's comments.

No.1 - I would crop a good chunk off the bottom - there is too much of it, and it becomes repetitious.

No.2 is where some HDR type work could make this work to overcome the large dynamic range - a tripod will be required.

No.3 when cropped as Brandt has done becomes the classic three horizontal bands (as in rule of thirds).  To me at least, these are always interesting.

Brandt's final comment - it seems to me that a tripod was not used.  Personally I never do landscape without a tripod - otherwise I end up with snapshots.  Mind you, your images are better than snapshots, so don't be discouraged.

Glenn