Watching the Virgin

Any comments welcome

Ron,

I like your composition here - it's not your every day take on the Watchman. So good job with that. Exposure-wise, I realize the contrast range was too high to go without a split ND, but I might have tried combining exposures to get some detail in the trees to the right. Given that there is detail in the trees on the left, it looks unnatural for the right hand trees to be completely black (or close to it). Also, it looks like you had the transition line on the ND angling down and to the right. This gave you the desired result on the left side of the frame, but the darkening of the right hand shoreline makes it too obvious that a split ND was used. Have you tried combining exposures in PS? Sometimes it is the only way to avoid the grad line and get a properly exposed final image.

 

Anish

beatiful shot, well done

Thanks for the analysis. I haven't tried blending two exposures yet. I wasn't sure if the plain sky was a large liability for the shot, making the silhouetted trees less of an issue. I'll give it a shot though.

Anish gave you a pretty good critique. Having gotten quite jaded with wide-angle images, I like to see what happens with cropping, and I find I like your image better with the right 1/3 or so cropped out. The blocked up trees don't become as much of an issue and I find it focuses attention on the upfront boulder and the watchman quite a bit better.

Is this what you have in mind?