Critique Lake District Sunset

Will James

Will James

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Playing with my newly acquired Sony A6500 at the Lake District last week and saw some lovely layers sunset. Got the tripod out and did a bracketed shot.

I tried to capture the various layers and atmosphere, have done some small tweaks to exposure and contrast but I’m still not entirely happy with it - I think it looks a bit flat.

Any feedback welcome so I can improve what I do!

DSC00744-HDR-2.jpg
 
I would suggest you have a think about what it was in the scene that caught your eye. Saying you're not happy with it would imply that you think it needs something. Cast your mind back to being there. What was it that made you press the shutter? Use that memory when you work with the sliders in LR.

The scene looks flat either because it was flat, or because you've pulled down highlights and lifted shadows to make it flat. If it was flat to begin with, then you've recreated a scene that wasn't that exciting to begin with.

For me, images I'm not happy with and don't know why, are because I wasn't really thinking about it when I pressed the shutter. It was 'just a pretty scene', but at home, on a PC screen, it is far less satisfying. Things I capture on a whim are rarely worthy of the wall space.

For me, the image is a bit bland. I quite like the sky (colour) and the mountains with the misty bits. I think it's the trees for me that spoil the image. They are extremely flat and the forum compression has done you no favours. No highlights is liveable-withable for an "atmospheric" photo, but no shadows isn't. If you look at the foremost ridge, you can see a definite "shadow" to the rim, separated by the mist in the foreground and mist behind it. It gives strong definition to the ridge and provides interest to the viewer. The trees are just a clump of 2 tones.

All in my opinion of course. Take what you like and leave the rest :)
 
jerry12953 said:
Have you combined two or more different exposures? If so that might explain your disatisfaction. To show the layers well I would guess the exposure on all of them should be the same......
Click to expand...

Yeah I did - it’s a combo of around 5 exposures. Perhaps naively I thought by having some overexposed shots in there that the trees would have more colour but as there was no light on them it didn’t really make a difference looking at the pics now.

However I kept the f number the same throughout
 
Harlequin565 said:
I would suggest you have a think about what it was in the scene that caught your eye. Saying you're not happy with it would imply that you think it needs something. Cast your mind back to being there. What was it that made you press the shutter? Use that memory when you work with the sliders in LR.

The scene looks flat either because it was flat, or because you've pulled down highlights and lifted shadows to make it flat. If it was flat to begin with, then you've recreated a scene that wasn't that exciting to begin with.

For me, images I'm not happy with and don't know why, are because I wasn't really thinking about it when I pressed the shutter. It was 'just a pretty scene', but at home, on a PC screen, it is far less satisfying. Things I capture on a whim are rarely worthy of the wall space.

For me, the image is a bit bland. I quite like the sky (colour) and the mountains with the misty bits. I think it's the trees for me that spoil the image. They are extremely flat and the forum compression has done you no favours. No highlights is liveable-withable for an "atmospheric" photo, but no shadows isn't. If you look at the foremost ridge, you can see a definite "shadow" to the rim, separated by the mist in the foreground and mist behind it. It gives strong definition to the ridge and provides interest to the viewer. The trees are just a clump of 2 tones.

All in my opinion of course. Take what you like and leave the rest :)
Click to expand...

That’s great food for thought, advice and feedback, thanks!

Casting my mind back I was trying to capture the definition of the various layers that I saw at the time and the gorgeous colours from the sky. I had planned to get there before the sunset to get a far more spectacular photo of the lake below but I was 15 mins too late. Then I saw the hills and layers so focused on that.

I guess what I saw with my eye was a bit flat hence the zooming in to remove other flat parts you can’t see in the photo. As per my other comment above I perhaps naively thought that by doing some bracketed shots I could capture some nice colours from the trees but it didn’t work as there was no light on them.

I’ll play around with cropping the trees out to see if it gives me the depth I’m looking for.

What do you mean by forum compression?
Also when you mention shadows, where would you like to see more shadows - on the trees to create some depth? If so then I think you’re right, the scene at the time was flat from that perspective.
 
Will James said:
What do you mean by forum compression?
Also when you mention shadows, where would you like to see more shadows - on the trees to create some depth? If so then I think you’re right, the scene at the time was flat from that perspective.
Click to expand...

I find that whenever I post an image here it looks soft and mushy. I call it forum compression but it's probably not the right use of words.

As to the shadows... Well the trees are a featureless blob - which are made worse by the soft edges to everything (forum compression!) I don't know whether it's a case of more light on the scene because I wasn't there. From your reply it sounds like you were trying to take *something* away from the trip, concentrating on the sky and the mountains. If that's the case, how about doing the opposite of what Alan suggested, putting the sky back and cropping a chunk of trees. *For Me* the image would look better without them, even though you'd barely have an image left. Trying to get more light on a scene that didn't have it in real life "to make it more interesting" can get you into a habit of using PP as a crutch to fix anything. Whilst that might be ok for some people, you'll always have that "hmm.. something's not right" feel that prompted the OP.

Were you trying to keep to compositional "rules of thirds" and "foreground interest"? If so, might I suggest that it's a case of framing your scene based on what's interesting [to you] in it rather than thinking "I must have the trees because I need foreground"

You probably need more feedback, because there's bound to be people who like the trees. I'm just 1 person :)
 
Again good advice, thanks.

I've uploaded the first edit to Flickr in case you wanted to see the original and without "forum compression" . I then edited the trees to give a bit more depth / contrast - what do you think?
Third edit is cropped heavily more in line with the "vision" in my head at the time, however, I didn't have any more than 70mm (crop) with me anyway.

Indeed I guess I was trying to to the rule of thirds and foreground interest - I should've just focused more on composition of what I wanted to get from the image - the layers of the hills and colours of the sky.

1st edit (original post):

DSC00744-HDR-2.jpg by WillyN Photo, on Flickr

2nd edit (trees):

DSC00744-HDR-2-2.jpg by WillyN Photo, on Flickr

3rd edit (heavy crop):

DSC00744-HDR-2.jpg by WillyN Photo, on Flickr
 
Will James said:
what do you think?
Click to expand...

I'll answer a question with a question. What do you think after going through all these revisions?

Wide angle lenses always limit you for picking out scenes in the land. From the top of the mountain there is only one view with a wide angle lens. But telephoto allows you to pick out details in the landscape and try lots of compositions.

Getting railroded into compositional rules can stifle your creativity.

I like the last one best :)
 
I really like the crop without the tree. Perhaps bring down the shadows so that the nearest ridge is as dark as the trees were in the uncropped version. I’d say you definitely don’t need a 5 exposures merged as you really want to keep the full tonal range to show the change from dark silhouette of the near hills to hazy grey of the distant ones. HDR merges make images flat. That’s literally what it’s designed to do. I’d take the image that was exposed for the sky and play with that on its own.
 
jerry12953 said:
Have you tried editing just one frame?
Click to expand...

What would that do different? Blown out sky or masses of noise in the bottom? OK maybe not with super careful exposure and insanely good sensor but still it doesn't change anything. It just simply doesn't have anything special going on and that's the problem. No foreground, nothing in the sky, no symmetry, no texture, no clouds and not much colour beyond that darkish orange, I would suggest perhaps inserting a flying witch travelling to DNC or perhaps a nuke going off :) Perhaps I'm trolling you here a little too much.

OP if you trying to show layers, then you need to make that the most prominent and obvious feature. 1. Crop in even more. 2. Black and white conversion or desaturate a lot until its basically toned greyscale. Why? Because colour is taking away from very subtle shadow gradations. 3. Increase brightness and contrast. I don't promise it will do any magic but there is nothing to lose.
 
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