I shot this yesterday morning at dawn at an area called the Castle at Mount Buffalo - about an hours steep uphill hike from the Cathedral car park. Which in the dark and cold (-6 celsius) was not easy - but I think worth it, The first snows of the season have not yet arrived. Nevertheless I like the hoar frost and reflection of the Castle in the water.
Comments and thoughts welcome.
Hi, Josh. I looked at your image for a while. It's of a scene that many of us look for, with a great foreground balancing something in the distance. After a bit, I came up with some ideas about the image. In the first I've added arrows to point out that my eye is brought to one spot by 1) the convergence of the 2 paths of the water, 2) the slopes of the two hillsides, with the top of the boulder accenting that convergence, and 3) that that is also the apparently brightest spot in the image. All of that draws my eye there, making the right side of the image seem less important. The reflection of the rocky ledge in the water is almost unnoticed. [attachment=14380:Needs_Cr...67552009.jpg]
If I crop in the following way, we focus on the convergences in the image. But I don't think that is the picture you wanted:
[attachment=14381:Focus_On...67552009.jpg]
Because the ridge on the right is the color interest, echoed by the reflection, I eliminated the attraction of the left side of your image by cropping at the boulder, shortening the foreground, and raising the ridge by cropping some sky out. The arrows show how my eye is now led. I would subtly increase the saturation of the ridge & its reflection, and dodge the foreground between the boulder, the reflection and the ridge. I would also very slightly burn in the upper left to help lead the eye to the areas you consider important.
[attachment=14382:Focus_On...67552009.jpg]
I don't often make such suggestions in the forum because these are such subjective issues, and it is your photograph. But had I composed the scene in the viewfinder, these are the things that would have (hopefully) occurred to me.
As it is, my crop is still not the way I would have composed this shot, and I am in no way saying that it is definitive, much less better, than what you captured.