Assupink Lake at Sunset

[Stinky]

I took this tonight at sunset. I am not sure what I think. I generally don't like large areas with no detail but on the otherhand, I think I kind of like the feel.



C&C welcome.

[Klickit]

I would have liked to have seen the whole reflection of the bending grasses/reeds on the bottom right. The feel of the image is very serene and the slightly muted colours are what gives this, as well as the perfect stillness of the water.

[carregwen]

It does have a sense of serenity, as Kit said. I find the wonky horizon a little distracting. You are right about the lack of detail on the left - silhouettes always look better when there is lots of detail. I think it's because silhouettes have to far depend more upon shape and structure as they have reduced colour that would normally help give shape to a shot.

[Donald]

Steve

I agree - areas without detail, like this, can add to mood and atmosphere. I think the concept of this is fine, but there are, for me, three points that you might want to consider.

• If you look at the leaves sticking up at the left-hand side, they're a bit blurred. I assume this is the result of a breeze causing movement, or they're just nopt in focus, which was maybe a focusing problem. So, maybe the shutter speed wasn't fast enough to nail them (couldn't see any EXIF data so don't know what your speed was). I would think that when you're going for this sort of silhouette image with a large area of no detail, then you've got to nail those parts where there is detail. Maybe the ISO speed needed to be raised to allow you to get a faster shutter speed, or you needed to adjust your focusing manually so that you got those leaves sharp?
• The overall colour range doesn't bring out the sunset maybe as well as it could. There was probably more colour in the sky that the image shows. And that's an exposure issue. So, whilst you needed to speed up to nail the leaves and stop any blur, maybe you needed to slow down to get more colour into the sky. How to do it? Don't know if you have and use Graduated Filters? If not, then maybe you needed to take two - one for the land (and those leaves), and one for the sky - and then blend them in post processing.
• And, finally, do you think the whole thing needs a bit of a clockwise rotation? It looks to me as if the top of the line of trees is higher on the-right hand side than on the left. This keeps grabbing my attention and stops me appreciating the rest of the scene.

Hope this helps.

[Stinky]

Thanks

I agree with all the comments. The shutter speed was slow and I didn't have my tripod. It was a spur of the moment trip just to get out of the house. My horizons are never straight and this was is a little drab. I am just starting to use PP and did not do anything with this. Thanks again for all the comments. They are great.