russian ridge open space preserve, south of san francisco

[bfkimball]

Hi everyone, here are two shots taken with my new DSLR while hiking. If you like, please click to enlarge. :-)

I would love any C&C you might have. I'm not yet confident with my post-processing decisions in Lightroom. White balance, exposure, contrast, and overall color saturation are areas in which my judgment varies wildly as time passes. One moment it looks right and two hours later it looks wrong. It's a bit like staring at a simple, everyday word for too long: it begins to look misspelled, even though it's spelled right.

[jiro]

The images looks great to me. Try to use some play of dark and bright areas to make the shots more interesting. I think they call the process "painting with light" where you dodge and burn some areas for visual impact. The crop is certainly unique and good.

[jamn4ex]

I like the first image . The path walking me into it.... I just want to run to the top of the ridge and look beyond. I love it when an image can make me feel part of it. Great work composing.

[Geoff F]

If you haven't got a bright blue sky, you might as well have a really dark thundery sky instead; so I agree with Willie's suggestion and I would carefully darken just the sky.

But that is just a rather minor point on a couple of good photos.

[bfkimball]

Excellent points on the sky. I hadn't even considered darkening it since that's about how it looked. I need to remember to be more creative, although I don't think that's how creativity works. :-)

Willie, James, and Geoff, thank you for the feedback!