Evening in Tupper Lake

Great scene, excellent colour, balance and reflection.

Great photo.

Beautiful strong colors picture!

Chris, Sergio, Pierre,

Thank you very much for the comments. This picture was taken sometime back. I did think the colors were great, but a bit strong, very much agree with Pierre. I hesitated to post, then I thought ' what the heck' and posted it. glad you all liked it. Any comments to improve it is welcome.

regards

kamala

Strong, rich colors and a beautiful scene Kamala.............BR, Holger

Kamala, This is a most impressive sunset. It is most deserving of being photo of the week. Congratulations. Is this an HDR. I ask because the sky looks a tad surreal. Still it's a wonderful image, well seen and presented. Thanks for visiting my images. Larry

Holger, Larry,

Thank you for your kind comments.

Larry, I did not use HDR. I very well remember using a graduated filter. I also did post processing with graduated filter,. The pictures I took without them are overexposed. The scene that day was amazing. the clouds had more arms. Like I mentioned, I have over exposed most of the others, with sun at center. I could not fix them even with post processing.

I was pleasantly surprised to see the award! I am really honored and humbled. Thanks to you and all others who have provided feedback so that I could improve over time.

kamala

I think I understand what attracted you to the scene and how it inspires you. For my taste, you went too far with the colors, which have become not just unrealistic but some stage beyond that. Also, the strongest highlights in the sky are completely burned out, graphic white patches, which I find rather unsightly. Also problematic is the very strong sharpening halo, or other processing artifact, following right along the edge of the mountains. It likely is a sharpening effect that took place at some stage, because the grasses and reflections are also razor sharp, again, in a very technological and not realistic way. This is meant to be a beautiful nature scene, and I think your heart and soul are in the right place for such a scene, but the technique and the tendency to overdo are working against the natural beauty here rather than actually bringing it out. While nature can be bold, especially in strong sunrises and sunsets, some of the more bold scenes actually do better with a nuanced and somewhat light-handed touch.

The pushed color extremes really work for me in this particular picture. Gauguin urged the Fauvists, if they saw/felt yellow, to use YELLOW and if they saw blue to hit the picture with pure ultramarine. The trick in photography is that one rarely gets given *just* the colors that one wants to use. I think Kamala was lucky, not just with the yellows and blues he could work with, but those touches of red across the middle.

I like the layered effect of the composition. In particular the way in which vertical elements of vegetation reach upward to connect each section to the next. The blown highlights and sold blocked shadows come across to me as poor handling of the file, rather than any artistic statement and the colours are way over the top, making the image unpleasant to look at. I want to like the image, if for no other reason than that it is everything a landscape photo should not be in terms of post production but I cannot get past all of those halos and the garish colour.

A beautiful scene rather ruined by over aggressive sharpening and/or clarity. Of course, in these matters there is no accounting for taste, but it you were going for some kind of concordance with what was actually there, then this photo departs way too far in the direction of fantasy.

Thank you all for comments. I will post a detailed one soon. I am happy to see this trigger a discussion and may be, some emotions. Best regards, kamala

very nice picture

Beautiful scene and nicely composed. Personally I would have backed off just a little bit on the "HDR" effect. As you can see, lots of people do like this effect, however, so you have to do what you like for yourself.

Fred G, Julie H, Gordon B, Robin Smith, Wojciech, Steve J Murray,

 

Thanks all of you for the comments and critique on the picture. I really appreciate it.

 

To comment on the rich colors, I will say this one represented the scene best compared to the other versions I have. There was a lot of yellow in the sky, and yes, I might have pushed the limits a bit. If I didn't I wouldn't do justice to the scene. I would not capture the colors of the foliage otherwise. The highlights are but natural. that was the sun setting between the two arms of the clouds. May be, I could have used multiple exposure which I did not!

 

For this one, yes, I agree with Julie H, Fauvists would probably capture this scene better! I thought this scene was best captured with strong colors.

 

I will keep in mind all your comments when I shoot next...

 

Thanks again all of you. Best regards, Kamala

i could get into a homage to Fauvism in photography. That would need to be a felt translation of Fauvist principles and visual style from painting to photography. When I look at Fauvist art, it doesn't simply look like colors are being amped up almost beyond recognition. Colors actually form significant abstract shapes within Fauvist compositions. The colors and the shapes they create are like a counterpoint to the main subjects, like an accompanying visual story, a sort of abstracting subplot. You pushed slider bars to unnaturally open up shadows, areas which now look murky and more supernatural with that technological haze that severely opening up shadows brings. Saturation bars have been pushed to a point of neon garishness. Rather than the color adding dimensions and abstractions of shape and designs here, as they do for the Fauvists, they simply scream unnatural software exaggeration to me. If, by natural, you mean the blown-out highlights are a natural result of your camera's exposure, I agree with you, in which case you could have exposed differently in order to avoid the blown highlights which may be the natural result of how you took this picture but don't look natural within your scene. They look like a mistake. Natural is not always even important, as long as something looks like it adds expressively or visually to the overall picture. I just don't see these blown highlights adding anything here.

Kamala, I like the composition a lot. The monotony of horizontal lines is broken by the slant boundary of vegetation, and the tree and it's reflection on the right just add the needed dynamism to the picture.

 

I personally believe a lot in art has to do with subtlety and harmony between colors and contrast vs forms and shapes, even if that means sacrificing some contrast and saturation as perceived in reality I think in this photo, the elements of texture, color and contrast compete for attention with those of large scale forms and shapes, instead of singing together.. I don't mind your saturated colors, what bothers me are the artifacts that are revealing in doing so. There are halos around many of the edges like the mountains which my brain perceive as post processing. IMO, post processing should be done in a way that doesn't produce vivid artifacts. For example, a good make up blends naturally with the skin and doesn't look like make up.

 

Now some practical advice. If adjusting one part of the scene messes up other parts, you can always use adjustment layers in Photoshop with layer masking to target only the area that you are interested in. Then blend the changes slowly over a large area. Again, subtlety is the key here. It should not feel like you ramped up the sliders.

 

Although I respect your decision in this, I think this image could be an interesting case to post in the weekly post processing challenge thread (assuming it still exists).

I like the feel for this scene. It is almost too much too take in. I probably would have tried for more of bottom crop to get a horizontal panorama and keep in some reflection at bottom. A pleasing vista.

Whoa! Dial back the saturation and you have a real winner here. Perhaps that is a matter of personal taste, but I think that more nature shots are ruined by over-saturation than other single thing.

 

I won't try to catalog the strengths of the photo, but affirm what others have said. Fortunately, in my opinion, what is really wrong with it is easily fixable. I do realize that we are looking at different images on different monitors, and so what I am seeing might not be what you are seeing--and this is a new laptop that I am using. Still, I would save the file at differing levels of saturation and either print them or send them out to be printed and see for myself what really works, if I were you.

 

The sky. . . Well, now, I would take it back to the raw file and start over if it were mine. Then again, maybe that is the effect you were going for. Again, though, I cannot be sure that I am seeing what you are seeing on our different monitors.

 

--Lannie