Foggy morning on Sandy Stream Pond

[Grace Scalzo]

This is an image created in the summer of 2008 in Maine. Would appreciate your thoughts, TIA.

Canon 40D, 16x35@22
ISO400, f11, 1/60

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Grace,
You have to be real careful with fog scenes because digital tends to wash the scene out very easily. Compositionally I like the way the trees and shoreline flow through the frame. Ideally, I would have preferred more seperation among the rocks to balance the brightness of the sky a bit more......in the re-post, I did a reverse s-curve (check Robert's tutorial at top of page)......this had an instant and quite dramatic impact.......I then lessened the brightness a bit with a layers on the water and 1 on entire scene......I didn't want to go too much as it does start to lose some of the fog in the distant trees.....so be careful there. Again.....more rock seperation would have helped minimize the larger area of the sky and fog but see if you can go back to the original and pull out any more depth there (S/H....highlight slider)as that will also help...... or possibly doing an underexposure of the sky and merging 2 images?......would be worth exploring.

[Roman Kurywczak]

PS Looking side by side.....you may want to be a bit more agressive with the brightness or even reverse s-curve.

[Dave Mills]

Hi Grace, Agree with Romans well thought out comments. I like your basic comp and the moodiness of the scene.

[Robert Amoruso]

Hi Grace,

I was looking at your image yesterday evening but having been under the weather, wasn't up to posting. I see that Dave and Roman made the suggestions I was considering.

Sky's like this are particularly problematic. Under such situations I will look for the scene in the scene and lessen the sky as much as possible as it is uninteresting. Perhaps a tighter view of the FG reflections with the rocks and the BG as the treed area with reduced/no sky is what I have in mind.

[Grace Scalzo]

Thanks, Everyone....appreciate your suggestions as I couldn't figure out what was wrong with this image. You helped. Robert, hope you are feeling better.