Beautiful image, Nancy! It might just be the mountain range in the BG but I feel like it might need a bit of rotation. I also wonder if you had moved to the left just a bit if you wouldn't have managed to get the highest peak's total reflection in the lake. Still, it's a beautifully exposed and composed image!
Last edited by Julie Kenward; 09-29-2008 at 08:04 PM.
Thanks Jules and Paul! I guess with the reflection, since it had been broken up with bird ripples anyway, I was trying to get some of the nice foreground grass in. I do have images when the water became calm and still, with the full reflection in and very little or no foreground. Thanks again for your kind comments!
Hi Nancy,
I'll be doing this tomorrow am as I am in the park tonight. The colors popped even a bit more. This comp is a classic. You did well not clipping the FG bushes and using them as a nice leading line. Only way to get full reflection is water edge.......so it's a catch 22......you wouldn't get the curve. You also did well minimizing the sky as there were no interesting clouds. Nicely composed.
Great looking scene and well composed. I wanted to see this image with a bit lower contrast and a little more saturation in the grasses. Here is what I did in the repost.
CTRL>ALT>~ (~ is the tilde symbol) to select highlights (the selection is automatically feathered).
CTRL>C to copy the selection.
CTRL>V to created a layer of the selection.
I then changed the blending mode to Multiply.
As this made the overall image darker. I first turned off the Multiplied layer. I then did the selection above again. Inversed it (CTRL>SHIFT>I) and then created a Curves Adjustment on this selection. Since we inverse the selection from the highlights, we are now lightening up the darker tones with the curves adjustment.
Turn on the Multipled layer. The image looked a bit flat so to add midtone contrast I created a BG copy and then did a Shadows/Highlights correction so I could use the midtone contrast slider to add contrast to the middle tones on the image. A bit of shadow correction also opened up the tress on the right. To finish it off I did a Hue/Saturation to build up the yellows in the grasses.
The changes are subtle but noticeable when you toggle them on an off.