Grand Canyon of The East

[Destin]

Hey guys, it's been a long time since I've been on here. I've been slowly getting back into photography after a long hiatus. Recently picked up a D7000 and 18-70 to play with. Got up at 3am yesterday to be at Letchworth State Park for the sunrise and golden hour. Unfortunately, the sunrise photos didn't turn out due to the crazy lens flare that the cheap 18-70 has.

This is the park that was recently voted the best state park in the America. It's also known as the grand canyon of the east.

Looking for some general review and critique of the photos because I'm very rusty on my photography skills, but also just wanted to share the beauty of the park.

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2.)

3.)

 

[terri]

Wow, that looks like a beautiful place to shoot! I've not heard of it before - this is in New York state? Very impressive.

For my tastes, your images are far too processed, and have a "cooked" look to them. I don't mind a little color saturation, but these are over the top, to the extent of seeing halos around the tree lines. Again, this is my perspective, and others may find it attractive.

Keep shooting - you certainly have some gorgeous areas nearby! Try some various approaches to your post processing that are more minimalist and see how you like it.

 

[terri]

Oh, and welcome back to the forum!

 

[Destin]

Wow, that looks like a beautiful place to shoot! I've not heard of it before - this is in New York state? Very impressive.

For my tastes, your images are far too processed, and have a "cooked" look to them. I don't mind a little color saturation, but these are over the top, to the extent of seeing halos around the tree lines. Again, this is my perspective, and others may find it attractive.

Keep shooting - you certainly have some gorgeous areas nearby! Try some various approaches to your post processing that are more minimalist and see how you like it.

Thanks! I'm currently editing on a crappy laptop with gimp because my desktop with Lightroom on it is on the shop for a bit to get a new power supply. I just opened this thread for the first time on my iPhone and I agree they look far too cooked, they looked much less so on that laptop.

That and I'm overall rusty, I'll definitely work on my processing. I've also never really been a landscape guy, I'm a sports photographer at heart.

And yeah, it's about an hour south of Rochester New York. The gorge that runs through the state park is ~17 miles long so there are limitless photo opportunities to be had.

 

[JoeW]

Welcome back. Lovely setting.

Here is a little bit of advice for future shoots since you said your skills and perspective are rusty.

1. Try to avoid centering the horizon. And that's related to my next point...
2. Chose a subject. Other than just a shot that says "ain't it beautiful here?" look to compose a shot that focuses on a particular subject or detail (and then the surrounding area provides context or perspective). Your third photo is a good illustration of this...is your photo about the pay-for-view machine? Or the setting?
3. I often find for areas like this, I'm going to go in one of two extremes with aperture--either focus on something closely with a narrow DoF (and then let the beautiful colors just be a blur in the background). Or get a very slow exposure and open up my DoF to add details on the canyon walls in the background (which I felt was lacking in #1 and #2).

I think you've got some good instincts here. You frame some of your shots (bench between two trees), have some leading lines, foreground objects that provide perspective...so you're doing some stuff that a savvy shooter would do when composing a good landscape.