We spent the last week in October at Petit Jean SP in Arkansas. Very enjoyable week except for the weather. It was foggy (actually low clouds) and rainy for almost the entire week. We put on our rain gear and just went out and enjoyed it anyway..
Hi Arlon, Looks like you captured a serene mood with a pleasing soft color tone. I've been playing with the image and found that if I cropped from the left a little past the right duck I'm taking out alot of empty space and making the trees more dominant while still holding the mood. The ducks, while adding an element to the left side are a minor area of interest to the overall. This could obviously be looked at other ways but an idea...
I think that Dave's cropping comment has a lot of validity.
I like how the subtle colors in this scene are not over-saturated. The softness added by the fog is most appealing. I do think that framing wider at the bottom to capture the bottom of the left most tree's trunk and more of the FG would strengthen the image.
I was trying for that 1/3s approach. Just vertical instead of horizontal.. I had cropped it vertical and skipped the geese altogether but then liked the touch the geese added.. This is a 3 shot, hand held, "auto bracket" HDR done in photomatix.
Last edited by Arlon Motsch; 11-09-2009 at 02:24 PM.
I was just thinking what Robert mentioned about going wider at the bottom. I personally have a problem with images without enough anchoring at the base.
Great mood!
If you want to hold on to the geese, you could try for a pano by taking some off the top (1/3 or 1/2) while still holding the mood. I tried the "scroll pano" and liked it.
I took a sort of hybrid approach to what others have suggested ... cropping from the left, but using CS4's content-aware scaling to keep the ducks in the frame. They add a little something for me that's worth preserving. The near-squareness of the resulting crop doesn't trouble me.
One thing bothered me more than cropping issues, and that was this dark area. It might be perfectly natural, but it looks like an editing artifact, so I painted that out.
Hey Arlon,
Very good advice given above and I don't have much to add but will ask a few questions so I may be able to give you a bit more in the field advice....were you to move back/zoom wider? I ask because along with more tree base a little more room at the top may have worked. Could you move left? I like the way the shoreline curves and wonder if there was any way you could accentuate that line while minimizing the trees on the right edge. Just some thoughts to ponder if yoou re-visit the scene.
Thanks for the input. I did take a number of shots here and will play with some of the others using these suggestions. David, the "painting out" looks a lot better. I don't know if that was something in the fog (more trees back there) or a processing artifact. Suspect processing artifact as you mentioned.
fall and fog seem to go togather..
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