Crescent Lake

[Paul Kammen]

Hi guys,

Looking for feedback on this image, not sure how to process the pine trees especially. They were rather dark in the morning, so I brought them up a bit. Not sure if I should leave them darker? Thank you for any feedback.

Canon 7DII
17-55mm 2.8 lens @23mm
ISO 250
f 16

This is Mount Rainier at Crescent Lake. 171753

[Don Railton]

Hi Paul.. I think the image is underexposed.. That's the bottom line and its hard to recover from that. You can lift the exposure more using gradients and masks etc but but you will run into noise problems when you do that. The best Idea I think is to reshoot it, if that is not possible then read up on luminosity masks and Noise reduction and have a play, could be worthwhile if you shot this in RAW. If it is shot as a RAW you might also try double processing. This is doing one RAW conversion where you have the mountain exposed as you wish, and then redo the conversion to a separate image where the trees are exposed as you wish. You then blend the two images together.. getting the exposures right at the RAW conversion stage will probably give the lowest noise. I don't think the trees should be left dark as they occupy approx 1/3 of the image and that's a lot of pixels not working for you.. from a composition point of view the top of the mountain is close to top of frame, but its easy to add a bit more sky above...

Don

[Paul Kammen]

Hi Don,

Thanks. I took different shots here, so can't really go back, but found I needed to underexpose to get the sky behind the mountain more blue due to haze and smoke. Here's a similar one that I think might be a touch better?

171760

[Geoffrey Montagu]

I like your second image and it's exposure to me is spot on. Look at the lovely delineation between the darker waters edge pines and the next hillside of pines beyond. Notice how clearly the reflection in the lake depicts this. The foreground flowers, small pines and green plants add richness. Well done.

Geoffrey




http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu (http://500px.com/geoffreymontagu)

[Don Railton]

Hi Paul

This is a way better image IMHO.. That reflection is beautiful and you have kept that little tree top clear of the reflection. The flowers add lots. Well done.. Maybe a slither of the bottom? Remember, If you find yourself in a position where the dynamic range is high, shoot two images at different exposures and blend in post. Also, shoot to the right ie adjust your exposure so the histogram is biased to the right as much as possible without blinkies appearing. You then correct exposure back in post. This helps reduce noise..

Don