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Adhika Lie
01-20-2016, 11:31 AM
One of the last landscape photos that I made in 2015 around Christmas time. I am taking the minimalist approach when shooting this picture. It kinda breaks all composition rules so I would like to hear your thoughts on this one. The title for this shot is "Oriens" inspired by the Christmas "O" Antiphons.

158770
600 mm, f/16, 1/2500 ISO 200

Cheers!

Adhika

Don Railton
01-20-2016, 11:17 PM
Hi Adhika

Welcome, but this image is very small..! Its a bit difficult to critique when images are so small. Are you aware you can post here at 1200 x 800 pixels? and it is prefered that you provide exif data from the camera also. Have a look at the guidelines for posting in the tab above if you havent read them. So, I am all for minimalist images and i like the sun peeking through the cloud. On the down side there is a greenish halo over the tree tops which I am not so sure I want to see. Composition wise i think I would have made more of the sun & cloud and forgot about the tree tops...

DON

Adhika Lie
01-21-2016, 01:40 AM
Hi Don,

I apologize for the small picture! I tried uploading it at 800x1200 but got rejected because apparently the vertical size should not exceed 1000. For some reasons I had in mind 1200 for the longest edge. My bad. In any case, I have edited my posting with the bigger image and added the EXIF informatio so hopefully it will give you a better view of the image itself. I am not sure about the green hue that you were talking about. But I will definitely give it a closer look. There was a lot of dodging, burning, and "curving" actions in the image so it might be artifact of those digital actions. Regarding the composition, it's certainly a subjective issue, but my concept was a sun shining through the trees. Perhaps the sun ray through the leaves is not as obvious as I would like it to be. In any case, you are right, the sun was probably too high up in the frame leaving some kind of void in the middle. I felt the negative space works but it's certainly not everyone. What do you think?

Don Lacy
01-21-2016, 02:57 PM
Hi Adhika,
Welcome to the landscape forum it is always nice to have new members posting here it kind of gets forgotten since the site is own by, moderated by, and its members are some of the best Avian and wildlife photographers on the planet. So I hope to see more of your images in the future. I really like the atmospheric effect you created and subtle colors and clouds. I do wish the sun was a little lower in the frame as I feel composition is off balance with it being so high.

Adhika Lie
01-22-2016, 02:39 AM
Hi Don,

Thanks for the very warm welcome and thanks for your very kind words. I also wish it were a little lower but then the sun would not be covered by that cloud layer that filter out the sun. Such is the life of a landscape photographer, eh? Haha.

I played a little bit with digital manipulation and cloned in some ibises that i took on a different day to fill the "balance" out the composition a little bit. I know, I know, this might not to everyone's taste. But I thought I would put it out there for some suggestions.

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Don Lacy
01-22-2016, 08:13 AM
Cloning in some birds is a little bit of a cliche but it does work here to balance the image it works for me

Diane Miller
01-22-2016, 02:20 PM
Adhika, welcome to Landscapes! Nice indeed to have some new blood here!

I love that you saw and captured this! My inclination would also be to add a little canvas on top, as the sun feels uncomfortably close to the top edge. That can be a good sort of tension for some images, but this one is so sublime that I'd prefer a more relaxed composition.

I love the soft light in the trees, and think it's a great subject for a little tone-mapping to bring it out further, and also the fog layer, which needs to have enough interest to link the upper and lower areas. I had to play with it a little. I think there is wonderful potential here, but you would want to go back to the raw file for taking a slightly different path, or maybe several, as I brought out some tonal issues that could probably be avoided. I assume the trees were very low contrast, which makes them hard to work with. Maybe a composite of two raw conversions is best -- but maybe you already did that.

There is a wonderful potential in this image!

Diane Miller
01-22-2016, 03:03 PM
I had to look up the Christmas "O" Antiphons, and that made me think of Chip Davis' amazing (to me, anyway) rendition of "O Come O Come Emmanuel" on his New Age album, "A Fresh Aire Christmas." Perfect music for working on images like this one!

Adhika Lie
01-24-2016, 11:00 AM
Hi Dianne! Thanks so much for the kind words.

The idea of adding the canvas is a really great idea. I also have the aspect ratio and composition of a Chinese painting when shooting this so making this more elongated vertically is actually a really good idea. The trees were really low contrast and there is not much that I can do to enhance that and to be completely honest, I don't really mind the slightly muted tone on that area. The lights through the trees though are very hard to work with. I want to enhance it but it's very easy to overdo. It was extremely subtle in the raw file to begin with and I tried as much as I can to bring it out. I think you did a very great work in bringing that up in the JPEG. I will need to revisit the file again and work on it to see what I can do to bring that out a little more.

Thanks for your suggestions!

David Cowling
01-24-2016, 03:45 PM
Welcome to the landscape forum Adhika. A good first image and good advice given above. Hope to see more posts from you. I am a bit of a purist when it comes to landscapes so the added birds are not really to my taste, but if it works for you that is fine.

Adhika Lie
01-25-2016, 02:27 PM
Hi David! Thanks so much for the kind words. I am, too, a little bit of a purist when it comes to landscape photography and that's the reason I did not want to post the composite to begin with. But in any case, I thought it was a fun post-processing exercise. Diane gave a really good suggestion to extend the canvas. I worked on it a little bit last night and I thought it really helped to improve the picture by relieving it from the tension that the sun created in the first iteration of this photo.