#1 - My biggest issue with this is the composition. The horizon is directly in the middle of the frame. This tends to make photos less dynamic. If you'd moved the horizon up the frame a bit, it would be a lot better. Google 'Rule of Thirds' for a better explanation why. Also the foreground is out of focus. I don't know if you were on a tripod or not, but if you were, there's two things you can do to try to fix that. The first is to use a small aperture. If you can manage it, f/16 should give you enough DoF. It's worth bumping the ISO up a bit if you have to, but using a tripod and low shutter speed is a better option. Next would be to manually focus to the hyperfocal distance. Basically what this is, it's the closest point you can focus to that still has infinity in focus. Your best bet would be to Google hyperfocal distance for a tutorial on how to utilize it. This is a really beautiful location, and if you have the chance to go back, I would. #2 - Sometimes atmospheric haze (it's the slight lightening, and blueing of distant objects) can help to give a sense of scale in a photo. But in this photo, I think it detracts. There's not much you can do about this, unfortunately. The sky is on the verge of being washed out, so a lower exposure might have helped bring out the blue of the sky. Be careful though, because that would also make your forground darker. On both of these photos, you did a great job of ensuring that the horizon was level. That's one of the easiest mistakes to make, and you kept from doing it. Nice work. You're doing a good job, so keep it up!
Thanks for the comments.. I have a lot to learn yet. This atmospheric haze... I hadn't heard of that before. The time between both pictures being taken was maybe 20 minutes. The pictures were shot in each others directions. Here is the first picture again but cropped differently.
Hi Eleanor, Taking the rule of thirds into consideration and the fact that the sky really doesn't do anything for the image, I went this way Cheers, Don
On the second image I cropped to a 2:3 ratio, that did lose some sky but... Both images had a little brightness, contrast and sharpness applied in FastStone Image Viewer, a free download. And a little trick, I don't go through the main page of FastStone, I save my images to whatever folders I want and then I right click on them and choose edit with FastStone. That way the image opens in a new window and the menu's are pop outs from the sides/top/bottom of the window. Just less clutter to go through And it will save the exif data which is handy when you are posting examples for critique. Cheers, Don
Oh, oh... Forgot to mention. More stuff to buy and learn, he, he.. A circular polarizer will help blue up the sky if you are shooting at ninety degrees to the sun. ND/GND filters will help if you are shooting into or towards the sun... Cheers, Don
