Pyramid Lake Sunset

I went camping at Pyramid lake. The sun was setting and I decided to turn

away from the sun and shoot the light playing off the mountains on the

other side of the lake.

Comments and constructive critique are very welcome.

Thank you.

very beautiful work!

It pays to be observant when out taking landscapes, and this is a classic example of looking around at the possibilities instead of concentrating on a single aspect. Beautiful expanse of colour and textures in the foreground and the shimmering lake and mountains beyond complete a wonderful landscape. Might have been worth using a smaller aperture to achieve a greater dof?

Sincere Compliments

Alf

Best regards Kyle!

PDE

I agree with everything Alf said.  

Thank you everyone sincerely for taking the time to write a comment about my photo. 

Alf I very much agree with your assessment that a smaller aperture would have been nice to use in order to get a greater depth of field as well as put the lens I was using into its sweet spot to get a touch more sharpness from it. Unfortunately a combination of my inexperience and camping meant I did not have the time nor forethought to grab my tripod before the light was gone. Nor did I think to up my iso above 100 in order to facilitate hand holding the camera stopped down more.

Hopefully as I learn more I will begin to be able to act faster during these fleeting moments to make adjustments to how I take the picture. 

Cheers.

Kyle;  I like the soft and complimentary colors. Good composition.  With DOF, I pretty much ignore diffraction and shoot for max DOF.  I figure, in-focus DOF is more important than the loses due to diffraction. I'll figure DOF than stop down one stop for good measure.  I also try to focus  1/3 into the picture since you have about 2/3 after the focal point and 1/3 before the focal point in focus.    Nice shot. Alan.

Hi Kyle,

A wonderful scene capture.

No need for an aperture change. The 18mm at F/4 was spot on.

If you require more DOF, just raise up the camera so to see beyond the closest subjects , and you will have plenty of DOF and clarity .

Best Regards,  Mike

I understand what Mike is saying and that his preference is to shoot wide-open as he believes that this where a lens is sweetest.  At f/4, the closest object could be no closer than 8' for the entire photograph to remain in focus.  So, yes, raising the camera as he suggests would work, but it changes the viewpoint and the photo would look completely different.  And so his suggestion does not solve Kyle's problem.

Many landscape photographers like to include objects that are closer than 8', as Kyle has here.  And so stopping down is necessary to insure that depth of field is infinite.  In this photo, assuming the closest bushes are 4-6 feet away (and that one focused on the bushes!), the depth of field at f/4 would be roughly 4-11' and so the background would be blurred.  (It appears that Kyle focused midway into the photo.)  However, changing the aperture to f/9 would have increased the depth of field to roughly 3' to infinity.  And so everything would have been in focus if one focused 6' out.  Regards, Jeff 

I am honored that everyone likes this photo. And I am really happy that it has sparked a discussion regarding aperture and point of focus. In this case I really felt like it was important and necessary for me to get the expanse of yellow flowers and green bushes in front of me which is why I tilted the camera down. If there had been more interesting colorful clouds in the sky perhaps I would have looked up further. In the future I will experiment both with stopping down further to make sure my foreground is in better focus as well as staying opened up and simply tilting the camera up further to make sure that the foreground is further away from the camera. 

Thank you for the suggestions.