Retezat Mood

Nice place, coolors. Makes me just walk and walk. Resizing to 100 % makes big difference. Keep it on, DDD

The light and the colours are wonderful and it is great the way the ridge leads off into the distance and the mountains in the background. If I had a critique, it would be that the foreground is a bit too stong and I miss that feeling of sky that you have high up in the mountains (or, if what you were really interested in was the structure of the stone in the foreground, then maybe forget about the sky altogether?)

There is a lake on the far left side. The sky is just perfect. The long trail is just beautiful. Love the colors. Great shot from a beautiful setting. From where you stand taking this shot, I would go a little further toward the top of the mountain on the right and take the picture without so much detail in the foreground. Thanks for sharing.

Gorgeous view with fabulous texture!

What a magnificent photo, Zsolt.

It gives off a feeling of majestic grandness and a reminder about just how great nature is.

I think the composition works very well in this photo. The mixture of diagonal, horisontal, and to a lesser extent, vertical lines works very well. The photo is busy without it being problem. I'd rather say, that the photo being so busy, which is especially brought forth by the level of detail found in the textures and contrasts of the photo, only makes it stronger. No matter where one looks, there are new details to be found. This is the type of image I think would be very interesting to have hanging on ones wall, so that one can go up to it repeatedly and explore the details of it even further. The colours of are pleasing and warm, and the exposure is spot on.

It is, in a word, a great photo.

Magic light, and the incoming clouds are great. No need to repeat what Bo said, but I think "The photo is busy without it being problem" is as much spot-on as the exposure. There is a multitude of planes in the composition, but they come together really well. A very strong landscape.

Zsolt:
Congratulations on the POW. The photograph's strongest elements, in my opinion, are its composition and its subdued colors. Although at least one colleague would disagree, I think the photograph would have appeared overdone had the sky been bolder in appearance.
My best,
michael

Great light & low lying clouds. I also like the way the crest leads the eye from front to back. The landscape has a very good texture to it. A good DOF use as well. Congrats on POW. A very pretty scene

Perfect composition, excellent foreground subject, perfect amount of sky to finish the composition and those fluffy clouds on the top of the mountain, a cream on a cake. Excellent image as usual from you.
Cheers.
Bela

wonderful image, very well captured.
Rich.

The visual movement is all wrong. Check it out now.

To my eye, this photo has a left to right orientation. As I follow the ridgeline, I get the sense that the curve ends up going to the right, and for me that helps determines the orientation. In addition, the bulk of the image lies to the right of the ridge, and the elements on that side draw my eye in that direction. In countries that read from left to right, the photo as Zsolt has taken it would reflect that "natural" orientation. But even more importantly, the photo as Zsolt has depicted would be real; one could go to this spot and experience much of what Zsolt has experienced by being there. To some viewers (but not all), that aspect is even more important.

Stephen: I agree with most of the things you said. I won't argue with you on the issue of the visual movement, I'll just say this: I like it more flipped and not because I read from right to left, because I do not. Being 'real' is certainly an advantage and often is a necessity. That is the call of the art director or whoever is in charge of the post-production. I must say though that the picture is really good. I could go on telling why but it's already been said. One thing though.. At first I got lost in it a little, simply because it doesn't provide a real sense of scale. If there was something tangible the viewer could relate to it would certainly add to the 'realness' of the scene.

The strong composition and dominant burnt orange color against the cooler blue of the mountains and sky are a force in this photo. That strong diagonal from bottom left to upper right is emphasized nicely by the light. The less dominant but very effective secondary diagonal, from lower right to upper left, in a more zig-zag motion, completes an X in the photo which is also a committed and strong move.

I find this photo also heavy, particularly in the foreground. That perspective allows for a glimpse of the sky, which strangely still has quite a bit of magnitude because of the way the clouds hover over the peaks, but the sky does get a little dwarfed by the bulky foreground which weighs things down a bit. I'm not necessarily criticizing this at all, just observing how the photo is working for me. A more typical approach might have been to include more sky and make the photo lighter (in feel, not tonality) overall. I don't always appreciate the more typical so something here is beckoning me to keep looking and feeling.

I think it works, notwithstanding any 'heaviness' in it. These are mountains, after all.
It illustrates why the old compositional rules are as they are, without becoming banal or derivative.

JDM, as I said, the "heaviness" comment was an observation, not a criticism. Also, the heaviness of a mountain is very different from heaviness in a photograph. This is why the comparison of photographs and reality often breaks down. As Winogrand said, "Photography is not about the thing photographed. It is about how that thing looks photographed." Me, I think there's only SOME truth in this, well worth considering though. I think photography is also much more than what Winogrand says. But I do tend to keep in mind the difference between how a photo looks and works and how reality looks and works.

Hello Zsolt, your pictures are getting better and better. From my point of view main improvements are in compositions and technical quality. I hope I get to Retezat finally one day ;-) Cheers, Lukas

Fred, could the heaviness be the amount of detail, the "texture" created by the grass and rocks? It does create some sort of visual "busy-ness" for me, though it does not distract me.

Wouter, it doesn't distract me either. It's just a feeling I get. For me, the heaviness I experience is not a matter of detail and texture. It's a function of the compositional relationships, the area, dimension, and perspective of the foreground as well as the relative dimension to the background mountains and sky.

The main positive features of this image are the composition and foreground light. The leading lines and diagonals work well but I feel are lost a little when viewing the image in a larger size. The foreground light is nice but not enormously special/unusual. I do think the saturation is a bit overdone in the foreground. There are some tell-tale signs of this in the lower left corner where there are small, extremely saturated, red elements that are unnatural in appearance. These are to be contrasted with the very unsaturated and low contrast mountain in the left, middle of the image. It appears to me as if levels and saturation have been applied very differently throughout the image.

The image strikes me as fairly documentary. It does not invite of a deeper interpretation or make me wonder much about the place or methods used in its making. I also don't see the moment or place as particularly special, exciting or unusual. I'm also a bit too drawn to the large, blocky area in the lower/mid right. This contributes to the foreground overwhelming the far-ground a bit for me.

The main issue for me here though is aesthetic. I just don't find this image beautiful. It's a bit busy, the colors are a bit off and the foreground is blotchy and ordinary. I made some changes that make the image work a bit better for me. Just some ideas.

I do not see this as an example of Zsolt's best work. To me, he has some stunning black and white images that show a great deal of artistry and photographic skill. JJ

Fred, you were not the only one to speak of heaviness, nor was I especially worrying about your interpretation.

There is an interplay between object and image.

The title of the Magritte painting below is The Time and Also the Words:

Interplay, yes. Still the heaviness of a mountain is different from the heaviness of a photograph of a mountain, to me.

Longer I look on it, more powerful this image become. Excellent composition, if it is my, I would magnify the foreground effect even more.
Zsolt, Congratulation.
Udv. Bela

I would go 20m ahead and 40m to the right. I would like to see the bright and dark sides of this mountain leading to the main chain.  IMO more than 50% of the photo area is lost.