Critique Been photographing landscapes for 3 months and I think this is my best so far.

MarkDuplock

MarkDuplock

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Mark
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I got a 2nd hand 10-22mm lens today and wanted to try it out. I'm very pleased with this one and I think it's my best landscape photo in the 3 months since I started.
Really excited to get back out there for more!

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An impressive composition. Bet you could not reproduce the colour effect in the foreground if you tried!
 
Mike Riot said:
The sky on this is amazing
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Lovely colour in the sky. For constructive crit I would say that the land looks a bit bright for the scene - some selective dodging might help here. Also a bit more interest in the foreground would make a more interesting composition - a rustic gate here would look great - the little triangle of grass doesn’t add anything so I would be tempted to crop it off and go slightly pano.

I love it when you get a shot you love that makes you want to get out again straight away and shoot more! Look forward to seeing more :)
 
You've asked for critique so I am going to offer some. It's a nice composition and you've done the right thing including a lot of sky, because it's interesting.

However - there is a clear line where you've brightened the foreground and darkened the sky, this looks very unnatural.

For me the sky is far too dark, again giving an unnatural look.

As mentioned above, some foreground interest may help.

Try not to get too tempted to shoot landscapes very wide all of the time.
 
Tom Pinchenzo said:
Lovely colour in the sky. For constructive crit I would say that the land looks a bit bright for the scene - some selective dodging might help here. Also a bit more interest in the foreground would make a more interesting composition - a rustic gate here would look great - the little triangle of grass doesn’t add anything so I would be tempted to crop it off and go slightly pano.

I love it when you get a shot you love that makes you want to get out again straight away and shoot more! Look forward to seeing more :)
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I agree about having more in the foreground, unfortunately there's just nothing there. I had a look at cropping it but it just didn't look right to me. I need to find more locations! :D

TGphoto said:
You've asked for critique so I am going to offer some. It's a nice composition and you've done the right thing including a lot of sky, because it's interesting.

However - there is a clear line where you've brightened the foreground and darkened the sky, this looks very unnatural.

For me the sky is far too dark, again giving an unnatural look.

As mentioned above, some foreground interest may help.

Try not to get too tempted to shoot landscapes very wide all of the time.
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Yep, I'm still getting the hang of filters and brushes in LR.

I'm a bit confused by the HDR merges - I thought that should take care of the exposure without needing such heavy PP? I'm using 2 stops above and below plus a correct exposure and individually they look right, but when I merge them they always come out dark.
 
MarkDuplock said:
I'm a bit confused by the HDR merges - I thought that should take care of the exposure without needing such heavy PP? I'm using 2 stops above and below plus a correct exposure and individually they look right, but when I merge them they always come out dark.
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I don't know what camera you're using, but many modern sensors would not require HDR for a scene like this, and it may be that using a single image would give substantially better results. That would certainly help explain the strangely dark skies and bright foregrounds in your pictures. If one of your images had no more than a tiny amount of blown sky then you should try processing that to see how it works out.

This was shot under roughly similar conditions, though with a less spectacular sky. I held the foreground back because it just looked un-natural with more detail.
Folly sunset 4 by Toni Ertl, on Flickr

And here's an example shot into a much brighter sunrise. The brighter forground here makes more sense because the sun is shining directly onto it, but where shadows are being cast I have deliberately left them dark, just like they would be in nature.
Sunrise across the valley 1 by Toni Ertl, on Flickr

Lightroom is an excellent and incredibly powerful package, capable of a huge range of adjustment. In a situation like this I would expose to retain detail in the very brightest parts of the image, then process to reduce highlights and boost shadows to balance things, sometimes using a gradient filter or brush if global adjustments aren't suitable.

Also worth bearing in mind that when shooting to include the un-obscured disc of the sun, it should always be blown unless there is a reason to include detail - that's how you see it in real life. However sometimes it can be behind some haze, and at that point IF you can see colour in the disc by eye then you should try to retain that.

HTH.
 
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The sky is very very dark but to be honest a scene like this needs direct light which this is lacking. If you don’t have direct light you need to think very simple shots like a single tree backlit against the sky. The left hand side of this has no point of interest so a square crop would work better, if you had that light.
 
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