Image Critique #10

Image Critique #10

Hi, here is Graeme Woods image that I will be critiquing this month. Thanks Graeme for submitting and sharing this image with us.

Image Details:

Camera ~ Sony DSLR
Lens ~ 17-50 f2.8
f16 - 3.2sec - 100iso - AWB (auto white balance)
Image captured as a jpeg

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Graeme has done a great job with this image, I really like the composition and subject matter. He has picked the right time to capture the colours and also the lighting at the time is just right. With this critique I'll break it down and talk about why it works rather than try and find a way of making it better because it's pretty dam good as it is. I will have a tweak with the editing though as I think we can bring the colours out a bit more and create a bit of depth in the image.

Technical

Before I talk composition lets look at the capture info.
3.2 seconds is long for this style of image, the fear is that any movement in the trees will show as a blur. At that speed it was obviously taken on a tripod but even so I think I would have gone to 400iso and f8-11 should give the depth of field that we need. In saying that the image is pin sharp so  it certainly was dead calm. Auto white balance has worked well here and not a bad choice when shooting jpeg only. I have found AWB not to work well in waterfalls and other forest scenes where there is a lot of GREEN, I normally use the cloudy setting in these situations.

Composition

As I said before the composition here is good and it is well balanced. The main elements I'm picking up on are:
The Bridge
Two trees on right hand side
Colour of foliage above bridge
Stone work on the bank
Foreground reflection

The composition works well as each of these elements stand out and sit inside the frame with a bit of space around them.
Have a look at the bridge and the amount of space to the left of it, that amount is the same as the space to the right of the trees on the right hand side.
With the image below on the left I have cropped some off the RHS to show you how the trees now don't sit well and the balance is lost with those elements. The image on the right has the base cropped off to show how this now becomes unbalanced.

RHS of image is cropped to show how this effects the balance of the image. The trees are now to close to the edge of the frame and we lose the feel and importance of those elements

Here I have cropped the bottom of the frame to again show how this is now unbalanced.

A Small Crop and a Tweak

I am going to crop a small amount off the bottom and top of the image as I think it will improve it slightly, I will offer two variations with the editing. Please remember that a variation is just that, it's not right or wrong just a way of presenting the image. The first variation will be to increase the contrast and colour, the second will be to de-saturate and give a more artistic feel to the shot.

Click to Enlarge

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   Click to Enlarge

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Thanks and feel free to leave a comment

Thanks for reading and thanks Graeme for sharing your image with us.
October Image Critique will be open at the start of the month, to submit an image you need to be subscribed to my Newsletter.

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