Sunset From Cadillac Mountain

[Rachel Hollander]

I took this one in June from the western side of Cadillac Mountain in Acadia National Park, Maine. I was mostly playing with a 2 stop GND filter and narrow apertures trying to create the sunburst.

Canon 7D
16-35 II @ 25mm
1/60
f22
ISO 100
EC -1
Tripod, GND, levels, curves, luminosity masks, straightened, NR on sky, Hougaard Malan action and sharpened in CS5.

C&C welcome and appreciated. Thanks,

Rachel

[Jerry van Dijk]

Hi Rachel, very good handling of the exposure, and a great sunburst too. The IQ suffers considerably from some red flaring (bush, centre of the image, UR corner). I would have liked to see more of the bush on the left, as a counterbalance to the sun.

[Don Railton]

Hi Rachel

Well you certainly achieved a fantastic sunburst..! Well done. I am happy with the comp as it is, might have otherwise gone for little less sky but that would clip the sunburst. My only crit/suggestion is that I think the image would be stronger if the haze in the foreground could be reduced a little more, not sure how, maybe by a bit of local enhanced contrast..?

DON

[Robert Amoruso]

Rachel,

An alternate perspective uploaded here. I used Shadow/Highlight in PS to open up the shadows and then Local Contrast Enhancement (BG Copy, USM @ 20/50/0) to remove some of the haziness. I also cropped off the brush at the bottom of the frame that intruded into the lower part of the image. This minimizes the tree in the lower left. Regarding that tree, I feel having it larger (as in the OP) presents an additional compositional element that has too much a tendency to pull the eye from the sunburst. Including all of it in the frame and perhaps further away from the camera position would balance it better. Minimizing it as I did in the crop lessens that affect. I tried eliminating it in the crop and liked that but it felt to "compact" me then. Only way to fix that would be in the original composition in the field; moving around to balance the tree with the sun.

Posterization (banding) of the lower tonal valued sky really takes a hit in what I did. Also the red lens flare on the left tree is much more apparent. Shooting into the sun at f/22 to get the sunburst invites all kinds of issues including lens diffraction, lens flare, etc.

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Jerry, Don and Robert for the much appreciated comments and suggestions. Robert - thanks for the rp.

[Morkel Erasmus]

You got a really nice sunburst here Rachel.
Overall a nice-looking scene. Some clouds would have helped here - but you know that :bg3:.
I like the additional FG detail in Robert's repost. In scenes like this it's important to give viewers the feeling that they're looking into the sun so FG shadow detail shouldn't be brought back too much.