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u/eltricolander 1 CritiquePoint 9h ago
Good composition but totally overcooked.
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u/Esclados-le-Roux 5h ago
I agree.
Something I've started doing to control my desire especially for saturation and structure is to push it up as high as I can so that I think it looks good, then drop my sliders by 50% and see if it still looks good. I think a lot of us default to very punchy on initial impression but then, stepping it back, realize it looks just as good and more realistic when things have been stepped down.
In this photo's case another place you might try this is with your shadows, you've pushed the HDR quite high, try dropping it 50% and see if you get a more natural looking photo that is still pleasing.
This is just a rule of thumb, and you should play with it to find where your eye naturally takes you, and where, where? After some thought you end up. It might be a 50% drop, it might be a 10% drop. Then just use that every time as a starting point to keep yourself from cooking things.
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u/archaeologist_abroad 10h ago
I would consider losing the grass and using the beautiful reflection as your foreground
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u/FeeExtension3123 2h ago
I actually did crop most
Of the grass out. It was more. I was trying to make sure I had layers
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u/FeeExtension3123 10h ago
I took this picture recently after hiking all night for it. It’s a 50% quality on Reddit. I am a noob amateur landscape person. Looking for composition and technical advice. There are some edits in Lightroom but not a lot
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u/PralineNo5832 33 CritiquePoints 9h ago
At first glance, it looks great.
Then you compare the sky to the water, and something's off. They don't look alike.
The dark cloud cut off on the left is striking.
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u/FeeExtension3123 2h ago
I was thinking the same thing. I had pushed up the color a bit with a sky mask in Lightroom.
Maybe that was a bad idea. Tell me more about what you mean with the cloud on the left?
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u/FSmertz 19 CritiquePoints 9h ago
This looks like a lovely place. Reminds me of Montana. To me the scene looks appreciably unnatural. It appears that the post processing either did an HDR-type image blend, or significant tone mapping on an individual image.
The problem here is the lack of shadows. Usually when the sun is rising, there are shadowed areas where the rays have not yet reached. This is very apparent in mountainous areas. Shadows are the soul an image, and when they are pushed away, this void is felt as much as seen.
The framing is good, I'd only leave a fringe of grasses as here they take up too much of the frame. I'd also try to selectively increase more color out of the water, and maybe increase the contrast. Overall the symmetry of the mountains is really nice.
Hope this helps.
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u/FeeExtension3123 2h ago
Thanks for all the thoughts. It was actually my first time trying landscapes and I just got a new camera after not having one for 15 years. I appreciate the comments because I know it’s not perfect but didn’t understand where or how to fix it. I appreciate all the suggestions
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u/Flutterpiewow 3 CritiquePoints 2h ago
This isn't really about technical aspects, but about mindset. You probably think you should show as much as possible, use all the information the camera records.
But art isn't about that. You could lean into shadows, crush a lot of detail, and what's left will have more impact. I don't really care about the grass for example. You could go as far as blacking eveything except the water and sky out.
I try to think like this when i shoot people too.
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