This photograph was taken from Dante's View at sunrise. C&C welcomed.

Thanks

Joe,

I love this shot. This is the kind of picture that keeps me working to improve my own work so I can someday produce results like this. Really nice.

On to a critique

Composition/use of frame space

Very nice - my eye flows from the lit bush to the near mountains, to the distance and back.

Colors/White Balance

I think the WB is spot on - as well as I can tell. The colors are great. The only critique I can really provide, and I am sort of stretching here, is to point out that there is a band of green in the sky. To me green in the sky is always unatural. I would see if the green can be PP out while maintaining the beautiful reds, oranges and purples. This is really just a nit because this is the critique forum.

Exposure
Nicely done.

Creative use of Aperture/Shutter
Seems appropriate.

Creativity / Emotion

Lots of emotion in this shot. Very serene, calming,...

Forethought/Visualization
Fantastic job. It appears you had the shot planned out and just waited for the sun to just barely land on the shrub. The light on the shrub makes this shot.

Post processing
Seems good to me.

Thanks for posting - what a great shot.

Composition/use of frame space:
Did a good job with this...medium strong anchor leads eye down to valley, mountains while providing lighting queues dont over do the background, and your eye roams through the frame to the upper right.

Colors/White Balance:
Blue hue and over all lack of pop on the photo due to blue cast.

Exposure:
Great job....light is not burnt out..shadows have lots of detail....looks great.

Creative use of Aperture/Shutter:
Class max dof...proper for the shot.

Perspective:
Excellent use of perspective to provide info on the size and scope of the large landscape.

Creativity:
Again...good use of creativity such a shot demands.

Emotion:
Yep....makes me want to be there....emotion achieved...lol.

Forethought/Visualization:
Your either very lucky...or you did a good amount of walking around....if you didnt put any into it....the shot will never betray your secret.

Post processing :
Here is where we deal with the blue cast...and the minor lack of pop. With the cast...you loose some detail in the not so distant valley before it gets to the serious haze..curves and removing the bluecast will tame that area nicely. I did about 5 min of work on it and got the below edit of your shot...I will take it down if you are not liking it or the fact I edited your work...just let me know.


Your Origonal:


Minor Edits:

Roman,
I like what your edits did to the foreground color but not what it did to the bush. I would mask the bush before taking out the blue cast as a trial.
This is a great shot Joe. Much thought went into this.But I agree with Roman on the post processing(Roman is a master at this IMHO).
Joe P

daveman,

Thanks for taking the time to comment on this image and for your kind words.

I guess I hadn't really noticed the band of green in the sky as you pointed out. I'll have to go back to the PP drawing board and see what I can do.

The only plan I had was to be up at Dante's View for sunrise. It's been my experience that being up high for sunrise usually gets some good results. This was the first time I had ever been there so I got there extra early to look around for a suitable vantage point.

Roman,

Thanks for your comments and additional work.

As for the blue cast - I guess I didn't pay much attention to it because the area that I was in was kinda, sorta in the shadows prior to the sun coming up a bit more. But I do like your treatment of the image. I agree that it does pop a bit more. Was it simply a curves adjustment to remove the blue cast or did you toss in an additional 'secret ingredient' to the recipe ? I can never seem to get the same level of clarity as what you have produced.

Please feel free to edit any image that I post here. Given your masterful post processing skills I'm grateful for any tips (visual or otherwise) that I can pick up.

Thanks again!

Joe P-

Thanks for taking the time to look. Agreed that Roman has the touch when it comes to PP'ing a file. I figure that I'll acheive the same level of skill in another 10-20 years of Photoshopping (will we be at CS10 by then?) !