I timed my arrival at Oregon with the warm weather. This entire field had been covered with snow a week earlier. The heat had created a bog of sorts with last year’s plant life being uncovered from the winter snow. The weather was a patchwork of clear skies and heavy clouds. I looked for an arrangement of cloud formations in their reflections.
This field has always been rich in compositions. As the summer passes grasses appear and then flowers. There is always something new to photograph here. That’s Mt Bachelor in the background. This is the side of Sparks Lake which gets little attention. I also have a version of this in richer colors if anyone is interested.
Oh My, I wishI were spoiling your composition with my float tube on Sparks Lake. The reflections of the clouds and the effect of the islands to form leading lines to the mountain are the highlights for me.
I wonder, with all the reflected clouds, does the image need so much of that above. Maybe less cloud would imply more mountain beauty. Also I would punchup the lower left island a little, to catch up with the colors of the others. I clipped a bit of lhs, seemed a little quiet.
What a beautiful shot Igor! My suggestions are the opposite of Dick’s. I would crop the bottom off, like so, because I think it distracts from the beauty of the rest of the photo. I also straightened the horizon line. I’d love to see the other photo you mentioned.
Thank you Eva. I did that to some degree already but apparently not enough. I fear I will start to lose detail because it’s at the far end of the histogram. I will work on it though. But you’re right, the water and clouds look way too dark. What was I thinking.
Igor, I agree with @Eva_McDermott that I think the original composition works very well. I really like the the large cloud reflection in the LRC, I think it adds a lot of interest to the image. It’s sort of the glue that holds all the grass mounds together (and helps balance the composition). My suggested tweak would be lighten the LRC cloud reflection (but not the dark water). I might also burn the LLC slightly too. I think these changes would make the cloud even more important to the image.
Yes, I thought that cloud together with the large mound of grass on the left created a sort of ying/yang composition in the way that they were similar in shape but upside down from one another, how they enveloped each other. In fact, I remember walking left to right aligning the two objects to get the proper spacing. I chose this comp out of several others because of that specifically. Thank you for confirming my thoughts.
I like this composition as well. I also think @Dick_Knudson comp works due to the diagonal flow.
For me and this might be personal taste I found the grass in the LLC to be competing with Mt. Batcehlor - a ping pong perhaps? For me bachelor is the star of the show and where I would want the viewers eye to spend most of the time.
I found that burning the LLC grass and dodging the mountain help to ease the tension.
This is a very interesting perspective and your rework is a huge improvement. This image looks like it has been taken with a “normal” focal length, maybe 28 or 35mm? I think my tendency is to go super wide on these and this is quite a fresh perspective. I also like the composition because even though there is a lake there but it’s pretty much filled with the reflection of the clouds. Another thing that catches my eyes is the snow, how it flows down into the water in the foreground. That feature gives a very nice visual flow to the image. Lastly, I adore the three trees here. Good things come in three?
