The mountains

[Lion]

I did some shot last winter in the alps and would love to get some feedback here's a first set. Please say what's on your mind, if you think the pics are rubbish I should know it ^^




for this one, I don't know if I should keep color or BW

[Iguanasan]

Hey, Lion.

These are a little easier to work with for critique purposes. It's usually a little easier to focus one at a time but I'll give you my worth and we'll take it from there.

1) Beautiful mountain scene. Exposed well from dark to light there seems to be lots of detail. The image seems soft (a little blurry) to me though so I'm not sure why that's happened. The clouds are way cool and it's such a spectacular view. All that being said there seems to be something missing to hold my attention.

2 & 3) This works well in B&W and colour though they could both use a little more contrast I think. The well lit mountain peak grabs my interest and you've highlighted it well with the light. Excellent composition though I might have included a little less foreground since it is so heavily shadowed. This one is also a little soft. I'm very curious to know what that strange black shape is (bottom right).

I see you are shooting with the Canon 450D (XSi) and the 18mm to 55mm lens. Is this the lens that came with the camera? Unfortunately, this may be the reason for the softness. Or it may just be a poor choice of f-stop for that lens. I've found that around f11 it's a fair bit sharper and a better choice of f-stop for landscapes. What did you focus on?

[jhuang999]

Black and white (imo)! Great range in tone there

[Lion]

Thanks for the critique !
I shot the first one at F/19 surely to closed but I wanted to have the ski traces and the moutains together.
the second one is F5.6, I don't know why I choose this aperture... I'm shooting with the 18-55mm IS from canon. I was told it was a fair lens...

I'll try to think when shooting landscapes aperture F/8-F/11 does it seems fit ?

On the second picture the dark form is a "Chouca" (Alpine Chough - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

[Iguanasan]

My pleasure. Pretty much every lens has a "sweet spot" for f-stop. I shoot with the same camera and lens and it's been my experience that around f8-f11 is that sweet spot. Most of the sharpest images I have taken have been in that range. You could even go to f16 but as you go higher or lower than that range it starts to get soft again. Every lens is a bit different so maybe your experience will be a bit different.

Ahh, it's a bird. Well, I would considering cropping that image just above him. Both he and the house below (to me) are a bit of a distraction from the beautiful mountain view.

[Marko]

Shot 1 is my fave here. very interesting composition!
In terms of making it better, the eye tends to rest on brighter elements in a scene. In this case it's the clouds at top left, but the clouds are not the main reason you took the shot.

For me the most interesting parts of the scene are the mist and depression/slope in in the center of the photo. Therefore I would darken the clouds at top left by 15-20%. and i would dodge (lighten) the mist and slope by about 10%. That's just my recipe though...it generally yields tasty results but you are the cook.

You should know that imo, 99% of images require dodging and burning in order to make them sing their loudest.

Hope that helps - Marko

[Lion]

I did Try to work on the dodge&burn for the first one. I had some difficulities, after adding to munch local modifications LR seems to have difficulties. As I don't have Photoshop I'll try to get along with it. tell me what you think about the result, it seems better than the original but I'm not satisfied w/o beeing able to tell why


I reframed the second one and tried to rework the BW tones

[Marko]

Your second version of shot 1 is singing louder now
It IS better.
Why? because now it's about the scene, not just the clouds that are a part of the scene. The mist is very apparent now. before it was 'dwarfed' by the brightness in the clouds.

If it were mine, I'd still tone down the brightest clouds by maybe 5%. The mist looks right to my eye.
I'd still play a bit perhaps to reveal more lighter tones in the immediate foreground....I might also try to remove a bit of the bluish cast on the snow, a bit.
.... you could play with a shot like this for a long time. There's many interpretations possible.

Hope that helps - Marko

[Iguanasan]

Marko covered the first one pretty good, I'll have a stab at the second. I much prefer this framing as it gets rid of those distractions. The top of the mountain is very near the middle and I think it should be closer to the top so I'd lop off some of the sky too. This would give the image a feeling of height that I think is missing. Sorry, I should have mentioned that the first time that following the rule of thirds on this one is probably a good idea. I'll have to leave the B&W tones to someone with a better eye for it. I think it could be more contrasty but others may have a different opinion.