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06/10/2009 10:04:11 AM |
Greetings from the Critique Club
My first reaction when this shot came up was "Woh!". It really jumped out at me with the detail, beautiful coloring, and peaceful composition. It reminds me a lot of where I grew up, also in Minnesota, though corn is generally grown further south.
You were on the scene at a perfect time of day. The dawn lighting does a great job on illumination angle, coloring hues and shadowing, bringing out the depth of the scene. Additionally that is probably the only time of day you can catch that lovely fog/mist on what I assume is a river and faintly under the distant trees. Now if you could have enticed some deer to graze on the light green grassy area it would have been perfect, but that may be too much to ask for.
The S curve of the corn rows gives a very pleasing flow to the picture. This gentle rolling is continued with the curved branches and slightly hilly landscape. I like how the sun is peaking up from the treetop in the left corner. You have enough light to emphasize the sun without throwing off the lighting for the rest of the picture. Your bracketed exposure and Photomatix HDR processing probably helped you with that.
I do like the coloring of the sky, but the clouds are difficult to see. Since you used Photomatix and Topaz Adjust I think it would have been improved it a great deal by selecting the sky and increasing the dynamic range of it to bring out the clouds much more. I just recently found out you can use Topaz Adjust on selections rather than the entire picture. You did very well on brightness, contrast (other than clouds) and color adjustment.
I do not see excessive noise in the shot, but you did shoot at ISO 400. You used f/16 while shooting L glass on a scene that would not be affected much by a larger aperture, so you might have tried dropping to ISO 100 and f/8 for an even better picture, at least with any enlargement. You have fairly slow shutter speed also, but since I'm sure you used a tripod and there is no motion in the shot you would not have benefited by increasing the shutter speed.
The almost letterbox extreme landscape crop works well here, allowing you to get maximum horizontal image while allowing you to have "rule of thirds" lines separating the sky, middle land and trees, and foreground fields. You do lose some allowable pixels that way, but it allows you to increase the definition in the remaining picture.
So in summary, this is an excellent shot that I can only see improved by some sky definition and, next time hire some deer. ;-) Please PM me for any clarification or discussion. |
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 Photographer found comment helpful. |
Comments Made During the Challenge  |
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06/07/2009 07:07:49 PM |
| beautiful....I would try another composition as it looks a little too static...great light and exposure |
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06/04/2009 07:04:40 PM |
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06/04/2009 10:39:17 AM |
| Great shot...I really like all the different layers to it. It would have been nice to see more detail in those clouds. |
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06/04/2009 08:12:05 AM |
| Very serene image, good job! |
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06/04/2009 07:25:35 AM |
| cool, love your colors and tone...nothing dull here |
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06/02/2009 07:10:03 PM |
| Love the pink to green and the fog. |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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06/02/2009 07:35:55 AM |
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06/01/2009 11:44:41 AM |
| Incredibly crisp - what a gorgeous morning that was! |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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06/01/2009 09:04:25 AM |
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| Photographer found comment helpful. |
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