Sunrise at Vermillion Lakes

[Rachel Hollander]

Taken at the first lake just outside the town of Banff, Alberta, Canada. I'm pretty sure the mountain on the right is Mt. Rundle.

Canon 50D
16-35 @ 16mm
1/250
f10
ISO 400
HH, CP filter
Cropped to pano, slight curves adjustment and LCE in CS5. I wanted to keep the different shades of green distinguishable but I have struggled with whether it needs more straightening because the different shades make the actual shoreline difficult to discern.

C&C welcome and appreciated. Thanks,

Rachel

[Robert Amoruso]

Rachel,

Backlighting is not your friend here. The lack of detail in the sky hurts the image. I like the idea of including the more well defined clouds in the water. Lack of detail resulting from the backlighting induced atmospheric conditions and low contrast is problematic here.

[dankearl]

Rachel, I just think a bit more contrast and saturation would really improve the image.
Minor fixes really, I like the view a lot and the reflection is perfect.

[dankearl]

I did a quick re-work of your photo, I hope you don't mind, I have never done this before.


rachel.jpg

[Dave Mills]

Hi Rachel, I feel Dan's repost definately improved the image creating more color and definition. Agree with Roberts critique...

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Robert, Dan and Dave - I should have said that I had played around a bit with some of the images from that morning and that this was an attempt to capture a bit of the ethereal calmness of just after sunrise. I sort of liked it and posted to see what others think. Oh well, not every experiment can work to everyone's liking.

Here's the next frame which I had converted and processed more traditionally. Only difference in techs was I shot it with +2/3 EC. Also I did not crop it to pano. This may be more to your liking and is more along the lines of what Dan tried to do. Thanks Dan for the repost.

Thanks again, Rachel

P.S. As part of my experimentation, I also converted this image to B&W which I'll post in the next pane for comparison purposes.

[Rachel Hollander]

And here's the B&W conversion.

Thanks again,
Rachel

[Robert Amoruso]

Rachel,

The last posts are working much better then the OP.

I am old-school landscape shooter, f/64 style so like lots of DOF and detail. Backlighting is always problematic with backlighting. Check out the seashore sunrise I post a while back. The FG rocks have little detail due to the backlighting, but the sunrise colors is what the image is about and the rocks act as an anchor in the image, more shape and form then detail.

[Rachel Hollander]

Thanks Robert - I checked out your image (missed it when first posted - work got in the way). It's beautiful and I see what you mean. Btw I think I'm leaning toward the b&w here as my favorite of the 3.

Thanks again,
Rachel