Hi Ken I like very much this! dead trees reflecting in the lake,simmetric, ripetitive shapes does good balance. The colors: red not too strong shades in violet with a sweet balance.
Curiosity: where is it, as I know S.A, ?
The colors do give a kind of somber feeling if that is what you are after. But to me the colors seem kind of dull for a typical sunrise. In particular, usually the sky up high is brighter. I like the composition, reflections. and mountains. The only question is contrast and color saturation. Did you play with that, or is the somber mood what you were intending?
I like the quietness of the image, the ripples in the water are really nice and the silhouetted branches add to the mood. The image needs around a half degree counter clockwise rotation since the horizon is crooked.
I took a look at JMW Turner's paintings and he certainly did like scenics with infused color though still harboring a moody feeling. I think that you can accomplish that here.
I took a look at the image and the dynamic range was flat on the highlight end leading me to believe that you might have been underexposed. Here I would expose right - which washes out color - then in levels readjusted the shadows by opening up the shadow end. When you do that, color returns.
In the repost I opened up the highlight end using a levels correction. Since this made the image brighter, I darkened it using curves and the DARKEN preset and then adjusted that to my liking.
In levels again, I pulled up the shadow ends to clip the trees to make then darker/blacker invoking a more moody look.
Normally after sunset or before sunrise, dynamic range is well below modern sensor capability and exposing right and adjusting DR in levels is my preferred pre/post processing technique.
Image also needed a CCW rotation for the horizon.
Compositionally I like how you handled the left right side crop at the more distant trees. I would have preferred the same on the left side. This type of situation is always difficult to determine where to clip elements that intrude into the image. If the trees did not recede to the BG on the left just as you get out of frame, I think you did end the left side in a good place.
Ken - I too like the calmness of this image with the dead trees and just the slightest ripple in the water. Robert's repost really takes this to another level.
Dead Trees
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