Mt. Evans sunrise mist

[Nancy Bell]

I enter this forum on tiptoes. I am guilty of lurking and have greatly admired the postings. I am trying to broaden my "horizons" and would very much welcome advice.

Canon 40D, Canon 10-22 f3.5-4.5 @22mm, 1/320, f4.5, ISO 400.

C & C very, very welcome.

[Robert Amoruso]

Nancy,

Glad to have you posting. Welcome.

In contemplating your image, my first impression is that what interested you was the mist and the color. Inclusion of the expansive FG, I feel, is distracting the viewer from that vision. Even though you used 22mm at f/4.5 the FG is out of focus.

I feel a better approach would have to been to minimize FG and work the mist and light either closer to the source or at different angles.

As it is now, the image is busy w/o a central point of interest. Not that every images needs a center or interest, but unless you have other elements working for you like geometric shapes, lines, patterns, forms, colors, etc. to compose with, defining the composition around some central focal point becomes the goal.

I hope I am making sense. :S3:

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hi Nancy,
Welcome to the forum and glad to have you join in! Robert makes some great suggestions above so I won't repeat them but I decided to take a look at your image in PS and see what I could do. I did agree with Robert on the FG.....so the first tool was the crop tool. Now some people say I am obsessed with it....my take on that is this.....as an old slide shooter.....we were always looking for slide mounts and masks to clean up an image.....in the digital world now.....that is what the crop tool is. A great example of that is Don's post of the Camels below.....it just works as a tight pano IMO! I did think the image was a bit red or yellow overall.....but I just selected the mist and pulled back the blacks on the red channel in selective color. Then I did an LCE (Robert has a sticky tutorial on it at the top of the forum) in unsharp mask....amount 25.......radius....30.....threshold 0. This really made the mist more well defined. While perhaps not the most dramatic.....it still works and incorporating some of Robert's suggestion in the filed.....will only help you get better faster! Let me know your thoughts on the repost....good or bad. We don't bite here:eek:!

[Dave Mills]

Hi Nancy, Glad to see you here and glad you jumped in.
The above comments are indeed detailed and there is valuable information in both. I don't have much to add other than I like the way Roman cropped the image which creates an area the viewer can rest their eye..
I like how you were thinking by including a foreground element on a slight diagonal to the mist. Normally a good compositional element...

[Nancy Bell]

Thank you very much Robert, Roman and Dave. That is just the kind of stuff I am glad to be told. The crop does improve the image. I really liked those foreground rocks but they just didn't work out well.

Glad to know you don't bite on this forum :bg3:. I'll post again.

[Nick Palmieri]

All has been said, but I will say that you really saw something pretty cool. I really like the the way the light mid-ground of the image. TFS

[Morkel Erasmus]

Nice seeing you post here Nancy...I am sure with your 'backyard' we can expect some interesting shots!
The repost by Roman does improve the image. I have found that when the light rocks, it's best to try and keep it simple and let the light do the work of pulling the viewer in. :w3