Hadrian's Wall

[KMRennie]

Sunrise on the wall (06:20). Fuji XE-1 Fuji XF 18-55 @18mm f13. All comments welcome.
Ken

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I would slightly re-balance foreground vs. background, i.e., make background slightly lighter and/or foreground darker.

[Isaac]

Seems to be about the turf in the left-hand corner.

(I've seen sheep in northern England jump higher than that Wall; then again, they do jump high.)

[sdwilsonsct]

Very pleasing. Getting the balance right among dark, light and realistic is tricky, and this one might benefit from some more work.

[Eric Myrvaagnes]

It's quite fine as is, but I wouldn't mind seeing it reworked a bit as others suggested.

[Richard Pearlman]

I'm in agreement with the comments above.

[KMRennie]

Thanks for the advice. This has a slightly darker foreground and toned the backlit grasses on top of the wall in the middle distance down a bit. Hope you like this better.
Ken

[john beardsworth]

Maybe lighten the length of the wall? I wonder if you could make more out of the nice fringe of illuminated grass and lead the eye across the frame. Nice shot.

[davidh202]

I like the new version. The shadows and lights are where they belong.

Beautiful light and composition
David

[Richard Pearlman]

The right side still looks too dark in comparison to the left side.

[KMRennie]

Richard,
I may lighten the very corner of the wall. The darkness was caused by:
1. Being in a shadow.
2. My using a 2 stop hard edged ND grad brought down to stop the sun burning out.
I also used a 2.5 stop soft edged ND grad but it's effect is difficult to see.
On a similar point I like light and shade and find the present fashion of lifting shadows or, in my opinion worse still, using HDR to lift shadows to put detail everywhere and destroy any natural look in the image. This is not to say that this is a SOOC shot, far from it  and I have lifted shadows otherwise much of the hillside on the right would be much darker and the wall itself on the face looking at you would be very dark if not almost black.
Anyway, thankfully we are all different and see things differently.
Ken

[Chris Calohan]

The second one is better lit, but I agree the right side is too dark for both the time of day and for the compositional aspect of the image. Rather than lighten it too much, I might be tempted to lighten more of the ridgeline of the grass atop the wall in the lower middle center part of the wall and allow a bleed of sorts to take place from there to about midway up to the crest of the hill.

[KMRennie]

Went right back to the beginning and redone the shot. The main reason being that areas had blocked shadows and other areas blown highlights. These may not have been obvious on a web jpeg but this version looks better as a full size psd and should print better. I have also reduced saturation a bit which seems more natural to me.
Ken

[Paulo Bizarro]

This is a good composition, with a difficult lighting situation. The use of a hard grad has the side effect of darkening the ridge, but still, I like the result. As photographers, we have to take decisions, and sometimes shadows have to fall where they fall.