Crisp Spring Morningby
bassboneComment: (from forum thread)
First of all, you did a lot of stuff right in this image: everything is sharp, the foreground water is pristine and a beautiful color of blue, and the reflection of the trees has a lot of contrast is pretty awesome. So why did it get a 5.36?
I think it is because it lacks a main subject, or at least something to draw your eyes. When I look at it, the blue catches my eyes first, then I'm led into the image but I'm left feeling like there isn't much to look at. The island is unremarkable and the trees behind are pretty dead. I only noticed the reflection later (which, IMO, is the best part of the image). Compositionally, it is ok, but without a center of interest it is hard to make a pleasing composition. Also, I get a little bit of an 'overprocessed' feeling from it -- especially in the background sky (haloing around the trees?).
How to fix it? Well, a slightly different vantage point might have helped the composition a lot, although it is difficult to spot something to center the image around. Possibly moving your right and focusing more on the reflection or, alternatively, taking a wider angle would help.
Assuming you can't retake the image, I think a recrop would help a lot -- crop it to the right and maybe remove some of the top, making the reflection more prominant. Even with that crop though, I think your viewers will still feel like something is lacking -- something in the background because that's where my eye tends to go. It was expert editing, so if you have a dog, kid, deer, etc you could have stuck them in a lighted area of the background and it would have given the viewer something to find. But, this was a landscape challenge so sticking a subject in is probably inappropriate...
And that may have been the main reason for your low score. When people think landscapes, they want to see large, sweeping areas of the world. Your view in this image might be a bit too restricted.
Another, random comment: I feel like there is a saturation imbalance in the image. With the saturation of the foreground water, I really want the woods in the background to be more colorful -- maybe warmer tones. There's not a hell of a lot you can do when the trees are still hibernating though :)
To summarize my rambling: technically a very good picture and pretty good processing on it. I think the low score resulted from a lack of something to draw the viewers eye and a 'contained' feeling instead of a 'huge area' feeling that most look for in landscapes. With a background subject, this could have been a really nice picture though -- the water and reflection is awesome.
FYI, I know how you feel. I took a picture for the landscape challenge (woods-covered hills) but when I went to process it I found that what I thought was beautiful at the time looked pretty boring when I looked at it. So I didn't bother submitting.
Photographer found comment helpful.
