Is this photo worthy of any rating?

[csondagar]

I have a photo that I am extremely proud of as it shows the landscape in good detail with good highlight on the hills (left side) and silhouette. It appeals to me a lot.

But I have noticed that this photo has not generated much interest when I first posted it over here, and on shutterpoint.com.

I would like to find out why this is the case. Kindly give me your views (positive as well as negative views). I am sure I will learn a great deal from your feedback.

What do you thnk of this photos? Thanks

http://images.fotopic.net/?id=3339694

[ds77]

No ones replied, so I will. :)

I think the photo is great. The only thing that bothers me is how the reflection on the water in the lower right and also the sky above the trees in the top right are both blown out. The sun is a wonderful thing, but I like to think of it as my nemesis. :)

Nice work, the waves really show some great movement.

[Malok]

I can definitely see why you like this shot. It has a lot going for it. It is missing a few things though. As has already been pointed out, the sun's reflection is so bright that you almost squint and can't enjoy the scene. It also distracts your eye from the main part of the image. Also the top left corner just seems like empty space as well as the bottom left. Perhaps if you had a higher vantage point you could have brought it into a bit more balance. It really has potential though and is almost there, just not 100%. Keep at it, you are definitely heading in the right direction to getting some real calendar photos!

[Flagpole]

G'day CS!

I like the use of silhouette in your shot. And I certainly like the overall composition. However to personally colours look a little off. Living in Australia we have plenty of blue sky and seas to its easy to take those for granted. I played around in Adobe with your image just to bring the colour out in the sky and sea and also adjusted the levels and tweaked the curve (and I am not really all that good with PS work). This is what I've got in 10 minutes or so:

http://www.members.oztralia.com/~bfeldman/Testshots/RisingMistandSuncorr.jpg

To me these colours look more natural cause everyone expects the sky to be bright blue and the water too despite the fact that they rarely appear like that in the photos. Thats why gradual neutral density filters e.g. http://www.adorama.com/CKA121L.html are such a good tool for landscappers as these allow the sky to come out without having to worry about the rest of the picture. However in digital world you can often get a similar effect without buying an expensive filter. See Digital Gradual Filter written by Fred Miranda http://www.fredmiranda.com/article_2/ too see how some people do it. You can do similar with just one picture and duplicating the layer twice (like in the picture above) and choosing some creative blending modes in Photoshop.

Another topic that Malok covered was compositin. Its not bad but can do with a tighter crop on the bottom. Try running the image through On-Line helper for testing photo for Golden Section (Rule of Thirds, Golden Mean, Golden Ratio, Golden Spiral, Golden Proportion, Golden Triangles) Rule. http://photoinf.com/Golden_Mean/photo-adjuster.html. See what happend if you bring the horizon line down to the lower third of the frame in rule of Thirds. Or maybe a Golden Spiral with even tighter crop again. Some composition rules are listed in this link http://www.johnharveyphoto.com/LearnComposition/ but at the end just because others are not as excited about your work doesn't mean that its a definite tosser. My advice if you have time experiment in Photoshop with your image. Try different crops, techniques and etc. You may find something else in the image or a particular effect that you like.

Flagpole
Sydney, Australia