Mountain landscape in black and white

[ncaleffi]

Hi there,

I've been reading this site for few years then finally decided to register and start participating. I'm an amateur prhotograper with my family and landscape as my main subjects of interest. My camera is the good old Epson RD1 - a great tool in my opinion. This is my first topic, and since there isn't a proper "gallery" section here, I hope it is the right place for it. I love taking black and white pictures of natural places, but still have to learn how to balance different levels of grey and, generally speaking, how to find a specific "point of view". I have also found that I prefer taking landscape vertical shots, can't tell the reason why. As a start, here are three shots taken in Northern Italy this summer. Please comment and critique if you will. Thanks! Nicola.

[Jeremy Roussak]

Nicola, welcome!

Your first is a nice image and I like the layered effect of the mountains but I think it would be much improved if you could open up the shadows, particularly in the trees on the left. It should be pretty easy in PS or Lightroom.

I like the second very much, but again it's a bit on the dark side.

I don't know how you have managed to get the clouds in the third to appear as they do, with the black blotches around them, and I don't want to know: they really don't look at all good.

Jeremy

[francois]

Welcome on the forum…

I like the first shot but I feel like it's tilted to the right. It's perhaps a consequence of tilting your camera upwards or the composition, I don't know. Other than that, I like it a lot.
The second image is very nice. It's well composed with a good light and an interesting sky. I would only clean up a few dust spots and the flare.
I'm with Jeremy on the third photo. The clouds are overprocessed, either sharpening is wrong or you used too much clarity or you have special clouds in Northern Italy that we don't have here in Switzerland.

[sdwilsonsct]

The compositions all draw the eye in and invite the viewer to mentally walk around in the scenery: nice! I agree with the technical points mentioned above. On the other hand the dark shadows lend a film-like pre-computer feel to the images, which isn't so bad.