Over all hilltops is peace - in all the treetops you feel - barely a breez; .... (Goethe)by
Harz_JoergComment: Critique Club
Composition-Content
The content of this picture is really beautiful, what a beautiful poem, your picture really evokes the same emotion of the poem, stillness and peace, a lovely concept and vision. i think that your composition is great, I love the simple lines with the plant highlighted in the foreground. The angle that you took this from, is pefect, with the sun backlighting the plant, I have tried this before and it isn't easy. I think that you did it really well.
Background
The background here is great, i think that you have enough background interest here to fit the challenge of landscape. The lines and shades of the trees are captured perfectly, with the snow really setting off the blues of the trees and sky.
Technical
I think that you have captured foreground detail and background well, with lovely colour saturation and use of light. One small detail would be that the picture looks like it could be rotated a few degrees to the right, just to even up the horizon.
My Opinion
I have recently tried a similiar shot to this which was inspired from the book "Understanding Exposure" by Bryan Peterson (excellent book!). He did an example on backlighting objects with the sun, one option is to make the sun out of focus with a wide open aperture, 2.8 or 4.0, positioning the object in front of the sun and photograph in macro mode. This resulted in the foreground object being in focus with the sun a slightly out of focus ball, very nice effects. Of course for this challenge, landscape was the point, not the sun but it could be fun to play with in the future! Anyway, congrats on such a beautiful picture and Good Luck in the next challenge.