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I took this with my “new” Canon 60d. This shot was taken at Mount Monadnock in New Hampshire.
ISO 500
Canon 60D
18mm
f/10
1/100How could I have improved, especially in my composition?
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Beautiful! It reminds me of my peaceful familial walks in the wood.
I personally try to avoid dead trees, stumps or dead branches in my ”trail shots”, especially in the front of the picture like in your lower left corner. I think it would maybe have been better if you would have walked a few feet to have the first tree on the left of the picture instead of dead wood.
Overall, it is a nice picture. I love the rich colors.Thank you! I did think it turned out rather nicely. For the rich colors, saturation helps. But that reminds me of a blog post I once read on lenspiration… 🙂
You changed your camera? I thought you had a T1i. Do you see any big differences between these two cameras?
@Mr. Quebec I did change my camera. I will have to do a write-up on it at some point. The difference is night and day.
Differences: Ergonomics, size, screen/lcd quality, shutter volume/sound.
@Mr-Quebec, you beat me to it! That was the first thing to come to my mind, was that he should have walked down the path just a little more to leave the dead tree out of the frame!
I also noticed the nice rich colors, and I thought, WOW, that looks like I’m right there on the path in the woods.
One thing I would recommend on a shot like this, is to get down low. Especially with wide-angle lenses, the lower you get, the more dynamic the picture will be. (Of course that’s just my opinion, there are always times and places for other compositions)
Maybe a vertical composition would be nice too, show the road filling the frame at the bottom, then gradually “vanishing” into the distance with those lovely colors on both sides of it.
BTW, congratulations on your new camera! I know the feeling of upgrading from an entry level to a more “professional” DSLR.
My first impression was that the horizon wasn’t level because many of the visible tree trunks are naturally leaning to the left. This causes me to think there may be some position where you could have taken advantage of this anomaly. Think opposing diagonals. I see an opposing diagonal in the branch stuck in the fork of the dead tree. I don’t know, perhaps I would play around with it. Also, think framing. The free on the very far left is a fantastic curve. I wonder if there would be a matching, oppositely curved tree that could have been placed on the right . . . just some ideas!
Also, even though the sky is not very prominent, it’s still the brightest part of the picture thus drawing attention to itself. I want my attention drawn to the light path instead. If some way the sky could be either totally eliminated or “reduced in quantity” somehow, I think I would be more attracted to the path leading bravely into the dark woods.
Thank you!
@buddingphotographer, it is a good feeling. It came with a battery grip, so the form factor is very different than my old rebel t1i.@JamesStaddon, How is this? I tried to lighten up the path (Photoshop dodge tool), but it seems a little overdone to me. THoughts?
Thank you for the suggestions!
- This reply was modified 55 years, 3 months ago by .
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It does look just a little bright. I would use the Lightroom brush tool instead of the Photoshop dodge tool. First of all, Lightroom will let you paint wherever you want, and adjust the brightness, clarity, and anything else later. Plus, with Lightroom you can always erase the parts of the mask that you don’t want, without having to go back and undo all your previous edits. It’s applied via a mask, rather than actual pixel level edits.
Yes, editing in Lightroom would probably be faster in this situation. But it wouldn’t be as precise or flexible as Photoshop. So, depending on how detailed you want to get, you can do the lightening in Photoshop using Levels or Curves with a mask. That would provides complete, re-editable control. I’ve attached a screenshot of how I would do a quick touch-up of what we’ve talked about here.
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