Fall colors in Muskoka

[Ryan Lepik]

Taken last weekend. Canon 40D, 1/90th, f11, ISO320 with 17-40mm Canon lens. Commenst welcome.

[Arthur Morris]

I think that getting up earlier for the sweeter light would have helped this a lot.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

The cloud patterns are lovely. I agree with Artie, that early morning light would have really helped.

[Chris Starbuck]

Ryan,
You've found a beautiful scene, with interesting clouds, nice reflections, and brilliant fall colors. I have to agree with the others that sunrise or sunset light would have been an improvement. I think I would also have composed a bit tighter -- IMO the two dark evergreens make a perfect pair of eye-stops with which to frame the most colorful part of the scene.

Here's my quick take at a crop to illustrate the composition suggestion I had in mind. I also boosted the vibrance (CS4) a lot to give you an idea of what the warmer, softer, edge-of-the-day light might have done. There's too much jpeg compression (and artifacts) here to do a really good job, but this should give you some ideas for what you can do if you go back to your original capture.

[Robert Amoruso]

I like Chris' idea with the left and right crop but find the sky more interesting then the water reflection. Now if the water reflection was like a mirror, that would be different.

I cropped off the water in the repost but I also darkened the sky using a curves adjustment and then made a selection using color range on the blue and white in the sky. This caused some of the water to be selected. I then deselected the water using quickmask (Q key) and painting over the water with white.I made sure the curves adjustment layer was active and then inversed the selection using SHIFT + CTRL + I and painted black over the FG water and trees. This left the the FG unmodified.

[Ryan Lepik]

Thanks guys for the tips I'll keep them in mind. Unfortunatly colors like these only come around every few years & it's hard to pick a time when the place is 2.5 hrs from home so did the best I could.

[Joanna Trescott]

My eye went from interesting sky to interesting water. I don't know if I would eliminate either. I like Chris' repost. Beautiful shot.

[Gerald_Gilligan]

Ryan,
Great job...stay with it.
The advice given is helpful!
Like you, I'm about 2 1/2 hours away from interesting area's and have to keep monitoring these area's for the best time to go.
I like this shot and tend to lean with Robert on this one, if it was shot earlier you might have had still water and soft light and that would have a very different mood to it.

Jerry

[Roman Kurywczak]

Hey Ryan,
Sorry I missed this earlier........some good advice given above....... and I offer yet another correction option to explore. I took your original and cropped.......I may go a little tighter like Robert did.......but I did like the colors in the reflection..........then I did a shadow/highlight adjustment.............amount 33 width 33 radius 30 on the shadows and highlights at 50/50/30...........no color correction or mid tone correction. Then I did a local contrast adjustment using USM at amoumt 20....radius 19.....threshold 0. Just some added pop for the jpeg compression the 2nd time around.
Keep at it and look forward to more from you.

[Bill McCrystyn]

Roman .. cheers. :D Ryan you have a totally great shot with some good options but my eye see's the last look - very close to yours. Robert's is very nice but somehow I like the farther perspective with just a little ripple ifor a low look across the water. NIce shot.